* Posts by Francis Boyle

2735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2007

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

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Re: yes, yes...

In my experience it's down to how you're accessing the installer. My UEFI (Asus) motherboards have always let me choose to boot USB drives either way and if I selected the legacy option (for Win7 at least) I always got an MBR install.

Big Falcon explosion as SpaceX successfully demos Crew Dragon abort systems

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Nazi Leprechauns. Yes, it's a thing.

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

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Oh please

There's nothing I was more pleased to see the end of than IDE cables. SATA's fine as long as they have a clip which they all do these days. Parallel, well thankfully I had little to do with it. The cable was solid enough but using it felt like wrestling a python.

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Flame

There's

plenty of magnetic USB/Lightning cables/adapters on the market these days. They work as advertised. Long term robustness is yet to be determined but I haven't had any go up in flames yet.

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HDMI tends to be a plug once and leave the cable plugged in until you replace the hardware not a "hang on I'll just plug the webcam" in sort of situation. Good design provides features appropriate to the use case which here is the case of the clueless user and the destroyed hardware.

Time to burst out graphing: Get the Windows Insider experience... by taping a calculator to your monitor

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Also

a third party file manager.

H0LiCOW: Cosmoboffins still have no idea why universe seems to be expanding more rapidly than expected

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Re: Riddle me this:

It's not that space is getting bigger, which as you suggest is nonsensical, it's the universe that's getting bigger. (There's an increasing amount of space in it.) So relatively, and in in a cosmic sense, your todger is getting smaller. Makes you feel insignificant doesn't it.

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

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They've

already got a phone that takes circular pictures if their website is anything to go by.

Long-term Linux Mint: 19.3 release unchains the Gimp, adds HiDPI, is kind to your older, less-beefy kit

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Re: Krita or Glimpse might be the answer here

I'm not sure why you think that issue with GIMP is a refusal to be an image creation program. From my experience the feature set is roughly on par with that of Photoshop, the lack of CYMK support being the notable exception. No, the real problem with GIMP is and always has been it's horrible and incoherent interface, and a name that makes it embarrassing to recommend*. I have looked at Krita from time to time but its feature set is pretty limited and seems to aim at being a paint program (somewhere between MS Paint and Corel Painter but unfortunately much closer to the former) and that's not something Photoshop has ever aspired to being despite the presence of "artistic" brushes. I've installed Glimpse 0.1 and as you at the moment it's just the old GIMP with a new name but I have hopes for it. Meanwhile I'll stick with Paintshop Pro which has alway been able to give Photoshop a run for its money.

*I don't personally have a problem with it but others have their sensitivities and the developers' response to suggestions of a name change seems to me, pretty much symptomatic of the problems with the project as a whole.

From Soviet to science fiction icon, the weird life of Isaac Asimov 100 years on

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Re: Journalists

Yeah, I'm really missing those riveting reports on yield rates in the semiconductor industry.

(You know them – they're the ones with zero comments.)

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Re: From Asimov to Zelazny

Fabthorpe – don't give the man ideas.

(For those not in the know Lionel Fanthorpe is a somewhat eccentric British science-fiction author – among other things.)

IT exec sets up fake biz, uses it to bill his bosses $6m for phantom gear, gets caught by Microsoft Word metadata

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Re: idiot

That's what they want you to think. See a certain current British prime minister.

A user's magnetic charm makes for a special call-out for our hapless hero

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Re: Hmmmm

"They all have them, and the generic name is "shadow mask". "

Er, yes and no. Aperture grills may be a type of shadow mask (though I don't think that's the common usage) but they consist of a grid of parallel wires rather than the perforated metal plate of the latter making them a unique and superior, not to mention expensive design. I could never afford one new but when LCDs came in I bought a bunch that lasted me until I could afford an LCD that I liked. (And even then it was a slight step down in quality.)

Boffins find proof that yes, Carl Sagan and Joni Mitchell were right, we really are all made up of star stuff

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Re: Correction:

No, just whatever Metallica are doing these days (the bald one excepted).

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

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Re: Surprised

TopTenz is in fact far better than it's name would suggest. It's basically a QI for the Youtube generation but with more serial killers.

Asteroid Bennu is flinging particles of dust and rock from its surface – and scientists can't work out why

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What?

You write an article about "ejection events" and you didn't go there.

We're not trying to be rude here but... there's an ice giant stripping down, emitting gas as it orbits a hot white dwarf

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Yes you are

And that's the way we like it.

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

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Re: Why does the UK need GPS anyway?

The ghosts of a multitude of dead sailors now residing in Davy Jones' locker might beg to differ.

Bad news: A company wants to sell artificial shooting stars. Good news: Launch delayed

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In that case I suggest you take lessons from an expert

Hammers are messy and leave evidence. Professional use phone books.

If tsoHost is lecturing us on sleep hygiene, Brit outfit really does have hosting back to front

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You're still using PATA?

Just to make a political point?

That's dedication for you.

Uni of London loses attempt to block mobe mast surveyors from Paddington rooftop

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It's the other way round

There's no question that Vodafone are entitled to put a mast on the roof – just whether the law that permits it extends to doing surveys. Not that I begin to understand the quoted judge's reasoning (I suspect something important was omitted) but the University's case was based on a legal quibble and contrary to common belief judges tend to not like quibbles.

You're drinking morning coffee in 2019. These eggheads are in 2119 landing drones on their arms like robo-falconers

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Re: At last!

When I want to make a strong impact on the human-swarm interaction I use a roll-on but I understand others prefer sprays.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

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It which works

with moulds so why not?

Dead or alive, you're camming with me, says RoboPup: Bomb squad hires Boston Dynamics Spot to snoop on suspects, packages

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I'd watch that

but you'd have to take out the cyber-truck. That's reserved for the Back to the Future remake.

It woz The Reg wot won it! Big Blue iron relics make it back to Blighty

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Did you forget

the MPV* tag?

*Monty Python Voice

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

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The analogue equivalent

is radio. In the 20s & 30s.

And as for a comedian speaking truth you might like to have a look at The Great Dictator.

I'll get my tin hat and gas mask.

Found on Mars: Alien insects... or whatever the hell this smudge is supposed to be, anyway

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i'm not going to downvote you

but, sheesh, you're on a techie website and you don't have the slightest clue about how technical competence works.

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

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No problem

Those little tools with the pick and the seatbelt cutter will now come with an accessory cannonball.

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Re: Stainless steel

A quick check shows that stainless steel is only about 2% denser than carbon steel so I wouldn't assume that going that route would necessarily result in a heavier structure. I think the real problem will be if the technique enforces a design that looks like something out of a cheesy 80's sci-fi movie. Musk might think that's cool and futuristic but a lot of people will disagree and buy a Rivian instead. (Which has a lot of cool features that are genuinely practical.)

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Re: looks horrible

From my studies of the same source I've concluded American cars are on the cusp of evolving flight.

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Serious question

What's the problem with the bed apart from the size which is inevitable given the four-door design? Sure, the sides are high but it's not like anyone's going to be shovelling dirt into the thing. And if you need to do something like that you can always hook up a trailer. On the other hand it has a built in ramp which I imagine will be pretty useful for getting equipment on and off, something your farmers, ranchers, and builders do pretty often.

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Better hope it doesn't fail

Because if it does we're definitely getting a Back to the Future remake.

From July, you better be Putin these Kremlin-approved apps on gadgets sold in Russia

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Upvoted

It's the apparatchiks who lack subtlety but that's the same the world over. It's just that Russia has always been in surplus in that area.

From humble Unix sysadmin to brutal separatist suppressor to president of Sri Lanka

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Re: Higher minds

Some of the best fighters are teenage girls. Just ask the remnants of ISIS.

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You seem to have forgotten the old joke

The one that ends with "No dear he would have been the POTUS and you would have been running the gas station".

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

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And with that, folks

We have reached peak Jake — just as I predicted while reading thge article.

Physicists are rather giddy after creating a rare type of laser using laughing gas

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Or

indeed a solar grill.

The silence of the racks is deafening, production gear has gone dark – so which wire do we cut?

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"in case the labels caused confusion"

Didn't know the University of Woolloomooloo had an engineering department

Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink

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Re: "Project Orion"

Are you referring to Florida Man or to the orange mutant that's known to lurk in those parts?

Section 230 supporters turn on it, its critics rely on it. Up is down, black is white in the crazy world of US law

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There's no law that I know of

against making promises you don't intend to keep. But many jurisdictions have laws against lying in a political campaigns. In principle it's no different from the laws that prevent companies lying about their products.

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

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Re: arsebarstards

The backup's not too bad but the retrieval on the other hand. . .

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Re: Now you know ... being as you are the receiving end of IT and AI

"Hysterical, Bordering on the Archetypal" should be the On Call motto.

Cambridge boffins and Google unveil open-source OpenTitan chip – because you never know who you can trust

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Nothing that can't be fixed

with a few 'going forwards'.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

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Re: priorities

It's easy because it has never actually being wrong except in the mind of over-correcting pedants.

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

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Goodbye Uber

would be ideal but I would settle for them* being banned from anything to with autonomous vehicles except as a customer.

*Not just the company, anyone who was involved in the project.

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Re: Reasonable defaults

"Until the system has two consecutive sweeps of a particular area, it cannot know if something is moving or not, so the initial status is static."

Surely, that should be 'undefined'. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

Boffins don bad 1980s fashion to avoid being detected by object-recognizing AI cameras

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Re: Great

Tesla are famously anti-radar (LIDAR specifically) believing everything can be done by image recognition. It's experiments like this that make many people think they are taking the wrong road there.

IT protip: Never try to be too helpful lest someone puts your contact details next to unruly boxen

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Except

pretty much the same is true of Chinese. A Chinese character is a complex symbol (usually) made up of phonetic and semantic components (very few of which even vaguely resemble the thing they represent) and even then usually only manages to encode one half of a word. So actually nothing like an emoji.

Reaction Engines' precooler tech demo chills 1,000°C air in less than 1/20th of a second

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Er,

tea, Earl grey, hot.

Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'

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Britain had coal. Switzerland had Hydro. The Swiss actually ran steam locomotives on electricity during WW2 because they had a shortage of fossil fuel and more electricity than they knew what to do with.