* Posts by Charles Manning

3509 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007

'Wear levelling' - a bedroom aid for multi-layer cell Flash

Charles Manning

Wear levelling is important for SLC too

SLC has an endurance of around 100k cycles meaning that if you keep on pounding on the same physical blocks you can theoretically reach that limit in a few minutes.

SLC just exacerbates the problem because the endurance is significantly reduced.

Join in the Wikileaks DDoS war from your iPhone or iPad

Charles Manning

Baffle, baffle

"it significantly affects everyday businesses around the world which rely on established ways to get paid"

How so?

If Visa/ Paypal/ Mastercard are failing to process transactions then it is because of the criminal actions of the DDoSsers.

Get real. A few kids will participate in the DDoS to try and earn street cred with their spotty mates. Thye'll still pull out their plastic as soon as they need to buy more pizza and nappies.

New NASA model: Doubled CO2 means just 1.64°C warming

Charles Manning

OMG! Won't somebody think of the plants!!!

Great, so in fifty years we'll have a plant obesity epidemic.

Blighty's kids nosedive down global reading, maths rankings

Charles Manning

It's a rite of passage

Every generation are louts in the eyes of their elders. Has been so since Ogg had to kick 14-yo Ugg out of his nest of animal skins to go mammoth hunting. Like us, they will get over it and become bitter and twisted and slag off their kids too.

This is a tradition.

Take away tradition and Blighty is just a swampland floating off the W European coast.

Google unloads Nexus S Gingerbread phone

Charles Manning

Cloud your data

Phones like these are intended for a future where wireless (wifi+cell) networking is fast and cheap and you can put all your pictures, music etc on a server.

Local storage is a PITA. You need to manually load/download data to share it.

Brits now spend more on debit cards than rustle or jingle money

Charles Manning

Is UK really that far behind?

I really struggle to believe that the Brits have taken this long to shift off cash to debit cards. Perhaps it is because the UK's EFTPOS systems are really poor.

I'm sure most of the rest of the world reached this point 10-20 years ago.

Herts cops 'ate the evidence' at scene of crime, court told

Charles Manning

CSI

is supposed to entertain, not inform.

Basing your legal views on CSI is as broken as thinking an a whole disk drive can be forensically searched and all the useful files copied to a USB stick in 15 seconds because that's what they did in some spy movie.

US iPad to get BBC pay app - with 'handcrafted British feel'

Charles Manning

iPad with "Blighty feel"

Leaks oil.

Wont start in winter.

Overheats in summer.

Corners like a Reliant Robin.

Microsoft arranges 'safe' Silverlight and HTML marriage

Charles Manning

Fool me once...

shame on you.

Fool me many, many times since 4th April 1975 then shame on me!

Feds pursue Russian, 23, behind ⅓ of ALL WORLD SPAM

Charles Manning

Take an asprin

It is unfortunately often easier to convince people to mask the symptom than address the disease.

97% of INTERNET NOW FULL UP, warn IPv4 shepherd boys

Charles Manning

Use it or lose it.

Some companies have bought up other companies and ended up with more than one class A. IIRC Apple has its own + one or two more.

Perhaps Apple has a big plan to use these for iphones etc.

Charles Manning

Ponsy-pants

I bet he also says omnibus instead of plain old bus and has a telephone instead of a phone.

WikiLeaks ousted from Amazon US

Charles Manning

So who is going to publish?

Don't count on the press - well not in the UK & USA anyway.

The press have a symbiotic relationship with government bodies (White house, Pentagon etc). To get the best stories and best feedback from press liason, they know they have to play by some unwritten rules.

They know that if they get too uppity, the press liaison folk will take an extra half hour getting back to them or leak their "exclusive" to someone else.

If you play the game then that camera team you send to Iraq will get hooked up with some soldiers in the trenches so they can send back dramatic footage of rockets and tracers. Cause trouble and the camera team gets to interview soldiers washing trucks in the transport part.

No wonder that editors etc are quick to get rid of reporters like Olivia Nasr and Peter Arnett.

Remember that in USA "Freedom of Speech" has a different meaning that what you would expect it to mean. You have the right to say anything, but the government can control when, where and how - hence the existence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Of course you can say anything you want about this, but you might have to whisper quietly in a locked room after 11pm.

Google antitrust? Ask the one man who can (almost) answer

Charles Manning

On what grounds?

They need to have at least slightly credible grounds to make allegations of anti-trust.

Facebook might be a blessing in disguise since they're getting a reasonable, and growing, slice of online-ad revenue so clearly there is some competition in the industry.

I guess at some level, they could force Google to do a Baby-bell and fragment into GMail, search, Android, etc and level the playing field by allow other players to bid for the ad business.

But would that really work?

Android out-runs Windows Phone 7 on price comparison site

Charles Manning

How does that make sense?

If MS is pitching their WP7 as an XBox accessory to be the "must have" toy for hardcore Xbox gamers then they will have two big marketing problems:

1) MS are already releasing the the Kinect (or whatever it is called). That's the "must have" Christmas prezzy/budget consumer for the XBoxer. Most people will have to choose one or the other and the Kinect is a more compelling purchase.

2) Win phones have traditionally been business phones sold to corporates because they are "serious" business phones competing against Blackberry etc. MS have relaunched WP7 as a "user" phone for facebooking etc pitched against iphone and as an XBoxer's phone. That slaughters the "serious business" label and corporates will not be buying their people XBox accessories and Facebook phones with all the security risks and frivolity that those imply.

Lawsuit says Facebook plunders user names, photos

Charles Manning

You are almost right

According to FB's terms and conditions you retain ownership of stuff you upload.

However FB have the right to use that info to do various things like help you to find friends or target advertising etc.

http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Tea Party activists accused of rigging Dancing vote to favour Palin

Charles Manning

Who cares?

Dancing with the stars and tea partiers deserve each other.

Ballmer, Gates won't slice up Microsoft

Charles Manning

MS has improved on failed products?

"Traditionally for new products Microsoft has waited for someone to create a radical new product that fails, found out why it failed and then produced their own version."

Examples please.

There are numerous counter examples:

MS really only got a toe hold with MSDOS which was crap compared to what was out there at the time.

Windows was not nearly as good as other GUI offerings at the time, including those that ran on top of MSDOS and only got traction because MSDOS had already blazed a path.

They bought their compilers, hotmail and many other products/services.

Was Office really better or did it just emerge as the only product left standing in an unfair race?

Mobile offerings: WinCE, Zune, kin....

UK.gov ignores 'net neutrality' campaigners

Charles Manning

Right to cancel

"then my Dad has a right to cancel, right?"

Depends on the wording of the contract. It could be argued that they were getting more than the contract offered them and the ISP is now paring back on their excessive services and are still providing service levels that meet the contractual obligations.

Charles Manning
Flame

Sick of the victim culture!

What kind of numptie moves into an estate with such stupid regulations?

Rather than blame the ISPs perhaps you should blame the estate, or, more to the point, yourself!

You have choices, be man enough to take responsibility for your life. Stop being a victim.

US may disable all in-car mobile phones

Charles Manning

Cell phones are a red herring

Sure, cell phones do distract drivers and have led to collisions/deaths but the number is trivial when compared with other issues.

By making such a huge issue out of cell phones the authorities are ignoring far more important factors that need to be addressed. Worse still, they're clouding the issue so that the real issues are being hidden and not getting the attention they need.

Acoustic gunshot locators get UK military field trials

Charles Manning

Bah!

The soldier would do better to take a leaf out of the pirate's manual and put a parrot on his shoulder.

The incidents of single round fire that can be paired are surely quite low in real life.

Wouldn't it be better for the tommy to actually keep his eyes on the terrain rather than squinting at his cell phone?

NY youth makes $130k selling real(-ish) white iPhone 4s

Charles Manning

Silly boy

While people have the right to modify any kit they own, he has almost certainly not secured the right to put the Apple logo on any kit he sells. He'll probably get nailed for this.

Apple also likely have a design patent for the iphone case. He will likely be violating that too.

Sounds like he won't have much of that cash left unless he takes off.

'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs

Charles Manning

Why be so paranoid?

I have not read the tech details but I suspect this is a priviledged instruction.

Quite likely the secrecy just reduces the need to support the feature. If you tell the world about a feature then you end up getting people wanting to use it and struggling with it and then whinging when you remove it or change it. Much easier to keep quiet.

A couple of years ago I spoke with an Atmel design engineer and asked why they didn't publish the debugging spec for some of their AVR parts. Everyone knows these parts have built in debugging and any sufficiently motivated black hat could figure out the protocol (or just plug in a $30 debugger). They chose to keep the feature unpublished so that they would not have to support it.

Global warming is actually good for rainforests, say boffins

Charles Manning

We'll have to chop the stuff down

CO2 is plant food. Plants grow faster when it is warmer. It strikes me that if we don't keep chopping the forests down we'll soon end up with the world overrun with trees.

What takes the biscuit is that so many Europeans - particularly Poms - complain about how the tropics is being deforested yet they killed off all their trees hundreds of years ago. If the UK wants to really reverse deforestation then they should start in their own back yard and restore the forests to what they were. Rip up the cities, farms etc and replant with trees. Oh, then reintroduce wolves and bears.

Of course the UK won't do that. They want to keep what they've got and have the third world make all the sacrifices.

Facebook set to unveil 'Gmail killer'

Charles Manning

You are the product

I am happy to go along with Google to the extent that I do because I consider the invasiveness:benefit ratio is in my favour.

I tried Facebook for a while and found it pointless, thus the invasiveness:benefit ratio would be negative.

There are many who define their whole being through facebook. Most likely they will find the idea of Facebook mail very compelling.

Perhaps Facebook could buy MS's failed phone biz and actually make it work amongst the narcissists.

Microsoft looks to KIN for support

Charles Manning

Face-phones

Sell them to Zucker-lad, rebrand them as Facebook phones and add a FB skin. Could sell them by the million.

I started this as a joke, but it would likely work.

'One-trick pony' Zuckerberg yet to prove CEO worth

Charles Manning

While you sound like a Zucker-sucker

They said he is an unproven CEO, not that he is not capable.

Zucker-lad has so far had a pretty easy cruise with Facebook. He has not yet had to navigate any fierce storms or endure the wrath of shareholders etc. Private ownership means he does not really have typical CEO challenges.

When he has been through those trials we can say whether he is CEO material or not.

AMD ships first Fusion processors

Charles Manning

Should help power

External buses require quite a bit of power to drive the buses. Keeping these on-chip gets rid of a lot of power consumption. Pin-count and package count is reduced which should cut down on cost.

Might end up being good for those all-in-one systems and lower end desk/lap tops.

World's largest pilot union shuns full-body scanners

Charles Manning

Operators might up the dose?

Surely these machines are fitted with X ray generators of a limited power and can't be souped up by twiddling a knob any more than a 500cc Fiat can be changed into a V8 by pulling out the choke.

An internal regulation failure might cause the device to emit overdoses for a shot while, but the unit would likely overheat and fail quite quickly.

Scare mongering.

Burglar cuffed after crime scene MySpace blunder

Charles Manning

In need of food money?

If the little toe rag had enough money to blow on weed, then surely he could have afforded food instead?

Assuming of course he didn't nick the weed. I expect the home owner would not have claimed the tyke stole his weed.

Australia claims it invented cutting-edge tech before rest of world

Charles Manning

Aah but...

The animal skin should have a warning: "Asphyxiation hazard: Keep animal skins away from small children."

I recently bought a knife wrapped in a plastic bag inside a box. There was a warning that the bag should be kept away from children because it is a hazard. No mention of keeping the knife away from the nipper.

Windows 7 'I'm a PC' man quits Microsoft

Charles Manning

Bootcamp is a great FUDbuster

Giving Macs the ability to run Windows is a great idea. Without this, the MS FUD machine could always say that Macs can't run "industry standard" software and you could risk buying a $2000 lemon.

Bootcamp provides a get out of jail card for those concerned about not being able to run Windows, Once people buy a Mac and find it can do what they need very few actually ever need to fire up Windows,

Microsoft's IE 8 'most widely used browser', rules ASA

Charles Manning

What about mobile browsers?

OK, most browsers are probably still on the desktop, but with mobile browsing taking off exponentially I'll wager that ibrowser or android will have the top spot soon.

Google's $8.5 million Buzz settlement a go

Charles Manning

Rule number 1

Don't feed the lawyers!

First official HTML5 tests topped by...Microsoft

Charles Manning

Just make my PC into a NAS

Screw this security lark!

Fans roast Microsoft for Silverlight demotion

Charles Manning

Perhaps peopla are not that stupid

MS made massive and ruthless inroads into the desktop (Windows + Office) in the pre-2000 era. They screwed over many value providers including Borland and Novell.

Since then MS have really failed to get traction in any other markets/spaces except Xbox and are losing market share in their core business.

Approx 5 years back, MS were pleading for other development suite/middleware people to enrich WinCE. Very few responded. Clearly many remembered how Borland and other middleware providers got screwed and knew the same would happen in WinCE space.

The same is true of MS web development tools. Very few have picked those up.

People no longer blindly trust MS.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

Charles Manning

Not looking for pre-packaged skills

Up until a couple of years back I did a lot of hiring. I would always choose the people with the right attitude (aka the bushy tail factor), a natural curiosity and the ability to learn. I hardly ever cared what languages someone knows.

Someone with the right ability to learn can easily pick up a new language.

Someone that lacks the ability to rapidly assimilate a new language etc is a waste of time. In this industry everything is changing and if you can't handle change you are useful.

I once had to hire someone to do embedded firmware development in C, writing drivers etc. The guy we eventually chose was a business grad with Visual Basic skills. No familiarity with C. He learned everything really quickly. Within a month he was reading schematics and writing device driver code in C, better than many people that had doing this for years.

Highest point on the Moon found: Higher than Mount Everest

Charles Manning

Earth's speroid without water

Since the average depth of the oceans is approx 4000m and the sea makes up around 71% of the Earth's surface, the Earth's mean spheroid without water would be approx 3km lower.

Charles Manning
Headmaster

Romanically....

Technically there are no oceans. Oceanus Procellarum was romantically assigned, not a technically assigned, name.

Charles Manning

But...

...getting to base camp is more of a challenge.

Microsoft holds Androids hostage in open source wars

Charles Manning

??MS subsidised notebook??

Get that in writing from Toshiba. If it is true, and not just some spotty sales kid trying to bamboozle you, MS + Toshiba could be put over a barrel for anti-competitive behaviour.

Apple unloads patent suits on Motorola Androids

Charles Manning

You don't understand patentese

No.

"Method and Apparatus for blaah" does not mean you cannot do blaah. It just means that you cannot do it in the way that they have specified in their patent.

For example, if they patented accessing the info by shaking the device, then accessing the info by biting the device would still be fine - so long as you don't shake it.

Charles Manning

Prior art

Whether or not there is prior art depends very much on the claims of the patent.

If Apple is claiming to own the idea of multi-touch, then there would appear to be prior art.

If, however, Apple is patenting a Method and Apparatus for doing multi-touch then that's a completely different matter. Their way of achieving multi-touch might in fact be novel. They would not be able to pursue multi-touchers in general, just multi-touchers doing it *their way*.

Fer instance, I have a patent for herding animals via GPS. People have been herding sheep by hand or with dogs for thousands of years and may continue to do so. My patent only covers using GPS (or equivalent) to do this.

Boffins mount campaign against France's official kilogramme

Charles Manning

centimeter?

Naah, millimetres.

Metric building/engineering plans are almost always in mm, even for "big things" like houses, cars and the like.

Nuke boffinss will likely be dealing with far smaller units than mm. As soon as you start using exponents then you use metres: 55x10^18m. Nobody uses exponents with mm.

Centimetres are just a low-brow measurement for "something about the same magnitude as an inch". Use them in any professional capacity (building trade, science, etc and you'll be marked as an impostor).

Most smartphone users breach employers’ security, says survey

Charles Manning

The game is called "cover your arse/ass"

The company needs to be able to show that they have done what they could should sensitive info leak out.

Sensitive data will always leak since people will take work home. While these days it might be on mobile kit or USB sticks, in the old days it was briefcases full of paper files.

Over 100,000 stops-and-searches: zero terrorists

Charles Manning

Don't blame the police

For the most part Plod & Bobby are not the ones making the decisions on whom should be harassed. Blame the politicians who direct them.

Most police want to work effectively and most understand policing far better than their overlords. Unfortunately the police don't make the decisions.

These days of extreme political correctness etc, actually doing something useful without causing offense or otherwise getting into hot water, is very difficult. It is far easier to just go along with this anti-terror lark and keep busy but out of trouble.

Also, consider that this isn't their own time being wasted but their employers, ie. the tax payers.

US Army trials robot 'leccy-n-bandwidth war-mules

Charles Manning

Nope

They just cyber-bully the enemy and hope they'll go home in shame or top themselves.

Charles Manning
Flame

5 lb of batteries/squaddie/day?

Dump the Pentiums, switch to ARM.

<--- Fire because these must get pretty hot!

Hacker almost derailed Mandela election in South Africa

Charles Manning

"almost derailed"

This sounds like it was almost successful as the bloke who changed a cheque for $100 into one for $1M and was successful up to the point where he presented the cheque at the bank.

Multiplying the SA vote tallys for the right-wing by a non-obvious amount (say 1.2) would have had no difference in a landslide election as that was.

To have had a tiny chance of manipulating the outcome, the scaling factor would have had to be quite large, say 1.5 or more. Such gross manipulation would have been a dead giveaway.

The defence force might have been planning to cause chaos, but they certainly would not have been involved in any computer shenanigans. There were less than twenty programmers in the defence force at the time, most of whom would not have been very pro-right.