Posts by Terry H

Oh Dear

This is a really disturbing plan, and it's not even April 1. On the surface it seems to be in the running for "stupidest thing I've ever heard in my whole life".

This sort of thing has been studied for decades by groups with resources that completely eclipse the entire Swiss GDP. Of course they never really said THEY were paying for it.

The kinetic energies involved far exceed fly paper, and a large percentage of the stuff is probably non-ferrous. So their grabber thing might solve those problems. Of course the far more likely scenario is that the debris will puncture their toy and turn it into more space junk.

I read once that if there were 24ct gold bars sitting on the surface of the moon we couldn't afford to go get them. I think that would be downright profitable compared to this farce. At least they didn't say they were going to drive around and collect more than one piece. Changing orbit is the single most extravagant thing you can do. So at least it qualifies as bad science fiction instead of stupid science fantasy.

Maybe their next version will have Fairies on Unicorns packin' Disruptors. They can call it their FUD program.

The DVD Dilemma

I read quite some time ago a quote from a slightly above average cryptologist. The basic statement was once you give someone the media and the keys to decrypt the media any effort you spend on that encryption is just an utter waste of time.

This is the same deal. World+dog has "the media" (Internet access). And a way to decrypt it (everything from simple hosts file to VPN and a thousand other approaches).

Leaving off the sticky moral issues of telling BT to interfere which is itself most similar to suing the car manufacturer for a drink driving crash, we rapidly arrive at simple reality.

Granted "justice" is never simple and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental. But the fact is that the car manufacturer is ultimately powerless to stop drink driving other than to not build the car. BT is equally powerless to stop piracy (or child porn), their only option being to not plug in the wire.

<StupidTolerance currentValue=fuckalllow/>

This is what you get for being a smart ass

They thought they sounded so pseudo-scientific when they came out with the "Human Interface Device" (HID for the uninitiated). Now I ask you, why can't I hook a heart monitor up as a "Human Interface Device"?

Maybe they shouldn't have jumped quite so euphorically into the sea of techno-babble.

It is always embarrassing when someone points out you're a pretentious wanker.

This makes things simpler

I had great suspicions about dropbox. It sounded like a pretty shady organization. Of course anyone who wants me to put private data on their mythical servers has an uphill battle on their hands.

Clouds are made of vapor after all!. Just ask Amazon's poor victims^H^H^H^H ah, customers.

I am pretty sure you can get the crap sued out of you for filing false DMCA notices. Of course no one does, and it's probably not even illegal to just lie and say you got one. Still I can now cross dropbox off the list of "things that exist in the universe" with a clear conscious.

Thanks for showing your colors so early on and removing all moral ambiguity from your company.

What language can get you in the most trouble

One thing people don't appreciate is that COBOL doesn't give you enough rope to do serious bodily injury to yourself or others. It is a 2.5 ton lorry, not a Porsche. The worst systems I have ever had the grave misfortune to try and maintain were written in C. I never worked professionally in C++ but it seems to have ALL the problems of C plus an entire suite of additional severe handicaps. It is probably presumptuous, but my gut feel is C++ is likely the worst language to ever gain widespread acceptance.

You normally only hear 2 complaints about COBOL. First, "it's old". Which actually seems to mean it's formal rather than the language specification was set down many years ago. If the latter is the actual complaint the person making it might be too immature to be left alone with your business' data. If the former... perhaps they are too reckless.

The second complaint is that there is too much typing involved. I never understood this at all. You can certainly have variables named A and X, it's just more likely that in a COBOL shop they will have things called coding standards that will give you the opportunity to work late and take every last little bit of cute, witty, obfuscation out of your code.

None of this should be interpreted as expressing my unrequited love for COBOL. I firmly believe in OO and would not choose a procedural language for any serious application. I have not seen OO-COBOL but am very skeptical of attempts to teach that old dog such a complex new trick. I believe JAVA is the very best implementation of OO and am crushed that Oracle is going to destroy the language. I sincerely hope Apache or someone will fork the language so it can continue.

So as is so often the case I cannot agree with those who are ostensibly on my side. Java is the state of the art. But COBOL is vital and a completely valid, if no longer the optimal, choice.

ICBM Guidance

I have never heard of GPS being used for nuclear ICBM guidance. I don't think GPS would work in the EMP rich environment of high yield nuclear detonations.

The monstrously brain dead plan to use Trident missiles as kinetic kill weapons was to use GPS. I'm not sure it's current status. I think it was mostly scraped. I can think of no more ironic end for the human race than replacing a $100,000 bomb with a $20,000,000 missile and in the process trigger a full scale nuclear war. Sometimes you really have to wonder about the decision making capacity of our leaders.

Congrats!

Congratulations El Reg! You've made it onto the hit list of mainstream corruption and evil. You're in the big time now.

I'm so proud. I knew you when you were just a little techie site.

I agree and kudos

First kudos on pointing out publicly your miscue on the iPhone. That is brave and I respect that, its easy to say I told you I was right, harder to say I told you and I was wrong.

It was really quite an easy mistake to make. You understandably, but naively, thought the discussion was about value, when it never was; the iXXX is all about form over function in the material world. (Please note the XXX is intended to mean all apple everything and in no way means to imply that stevie condones, or indeed ever even has had, SEX).

Anyway, as the relentless TV spots point out M$ is about as uncool as tech gets. Therefore, I'll join you out on that branch and say the same factors that lead to iApple will in no way translate to success for Windows Phoney 7. I was stunned when Palm shipped their "new" OS that was 100% incompatible with over a decade of pre-existing software. WP7 will be the same deal. There is no hope for adoption, it offers nothing of consequence - just some eye candy, but those attracted to shiny objects already have their iPhones and won't ever look to see it.

Meaningful (to me) Analogy:

The main problem IMO with Vista was in microsoft's fanatical attempt to take over digital media they intentionally broke the device driver model. Windows 7 is "better" because without any other option the rest of the industry has now coded to this less robust model. I would LOVE to see Windows 8 not support the windows API. A whole new, and of course better API. Perhaps require ALL applications to be written in Silverlight. Sort of a zombie abomination of Chrome OS.

"People love to buy all new everything that doesn't work quite as well as what they had before."

If that statement is true, GO FOR IT microsoft. I'm sure people will be beating down your door with sacks-o-cash.

Outstanding article

Brilliant, really brilliant.

And just because I love the quote and it fits in normal conversation so seldom:

"If it can't be grown it has to be mined."

Hoping microsoft doesn't get heard

The patent system is not just horribly broken. It has been perverted into true evil. As I've said many times if the system in place today existed in 1903 the Wright brothers would have patented heavier than air flight and no one else would have EVER been allowed to build an airplane. Yes, patents are SUPPOSED to expire, but so are copyrights!

The solution is not for microsoft et al to whine at the supreme court. The solution is for them to pay up. They lost fair and square. Then they need to use their utterly unstoppable lobbying might to instruct their lap dogs in Congress to change the law.

This case presents a unique opportunity wherein the shoe is on the other foot. Suddenly, one of these mega-corps has lost a case which is in fact indistinguishable from the business world terror attacks their legal departments routinely launch against world+dog.

If microsoft wins this case they, and all the rest, will have no incentive to fix this abomination of a "system". It can't be patched up with "standard of proof" tweaking. It needs a comprehensive rewrite; step 1 of which is to remove software from the list of things you can patent. Who wants to bet microsoft had rather pay out $290M than change a system they routinely use to bludgeon innocent victims.

Copyright, software? absolutely! Patent, software? It doesn't even make semantic sense. It's like saying it is hotter in here than the length of a football field.

Jobs are good too

OK, so I didn't read all 3 pages, as everyone seems to agree schools can't teach, although that news item is at least 20 years old. And M$ has made a bad situation worse, also true. Although when apple gets their foot in the door "worse" goes to "mouth breathing lackey".

STILL, one point I haven't seen yet is it would just be super cool if there were jobs doing this stuff too. If a kid finds out they'll make less when they graduate than their father did, and they have to move to India to get any job at all, that can be somewhat off-putting.

No Punishment EVER

"The Government" whomever "they" are, are never, not ever, no I really mean it, not previously, not now, nor will be until the end of time, held accountable for their actions. The only exceptions I have seen are the losers in a war - most notably the French Revolution. OK, they really did go a bit too far, but you have to admire their dedication. And it was sort of the "not accountable" part that caused the whole mess to begin with wasn't it?

Every single "power" should have a SEVERE prison sentence associated for misuse. And by the way, just following orders didn't work in Nuremberg for people who could reasonably expect to be killed on the spot for failure to comply, it sure as hell shouldn't be an excuse for some wanker in the local council (or the FBI).

Why do Afghan terrorists have more rights that UK and US citizens?

Libel is in the eye of the beholder

This reminds me of the case recently where ATT sued Verizon for airing commercials saying ATT's 3G service was nearly non-existent. In a rare fit of sanity, the court sided with Verizion saying that just because it was inconvenient and embarrassing did not make it libel (slander in this case).

This was of course probably due more by Verizon's deep pockets rather than any deep seated commitment to right vs wrong. But it was still gratifying to see them get it right for once. Too often in the US the right to free speech is usurped by some wanker's right to not be offended.

If I say you kill babies and grill them up on Sunday afternoon, then yeah, that's libel. If I say you're a shiftless waste of space, well... Not too many people who are not a shiftless waste of space would really get all up in arms about it.

What part of open source did I miss

Well everyone else covered roaming data charges, and time bombed shiteware and most of the other good stuff. But I can still add this nugget:

Android is open source right? Even if they don't open source that module it wouldn't matter any at all. The API is known, most anyone with just a little time and a compiler should be able to defeat this or any other documented API in fairly short order. You say "Oh no, that would beak marketplace". WHY? I can wrap and rename marketplace - done and dusted. WAY easier than installing a custom build when you don't have root access. Well some people allege to have figured that out in some special cases. But it seems you must have physical access to the hardware to make that work, so no worries there.

I agree with not wanting your stuff pirated, but this seems trivially stupid.

So we'll have full height drives and no full height bays?

Glad I still have my XT with the full height drive bay. Can't wait to hook 4TB to my 8088.

Not losing money on me

I was early to their party. Got in on like the second closed beta. It was, and remains, an intriguing idea. But the client software is unusable crap and hasn't ever gotten any better.

So no tears here.

This is really scary

Sometimes the UK "justice" system just baffles me. In many ways things have regressed to the dark ages. Even refusing to sit quietly in your flat and letting someone hack off your arms is likely to get you arrested for making too much noise.

Maybe the driver got charged because it was the word of 2 (assailants) against 1 (victim). Or perhaps one of the assailants had noble blood? Not that NZ has any, but DAMN Folks!!

You know the French were really on to something with that whole revolution thing. Granted they went a bit too far but they did certainly fix the immediate problem. At the absolute minimum the government should pay the poor bloke a BIG settlement and ALL the police involved (including the idiot 999 operator) should be fired and bared from ever working in a police service again.

Well that's that

Android it is. That was easy.

RIP Redmond. Good show following PALM once again.

Well this is disappointing

Perhaps I should have kept my Sprint phone. They'd never get a word. Plus the constant dropped calls would be like a poor man's spread spectrum.

Well Done EC!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NFT

(well maybe some)

P.S.

Well Fucking DONE!

Which is more important?

Had you rather worry about some mindless drone seeing a low res black & white "image" (photo is too kind) of your silhouette or should you perhaps worry about your DNA being destroyed?!?!

There are MANY links to this. Google it yourself. Here's one:

http://www.truthout.org/article/full-body-scanners-used-air-passengers-may-damage-human-dna

This is REALLY serious and I wish the fools would quite whining about porns so maybe saner folk to talk about the real threat that "THIS SCANNER MAY KILL YOU".

The real question

The real question here is:

Did Amazon reach out to everyone's Kindle and delete the books they'd already purchased?

What angers me...

People talk of the "huge waste" and all the better uses that money could be put to. LIKE F*ING WHAT? Another couple billion to follow the many trillions we've poured on entitlement programs? Do you, for one second, believe that would even be visible? The entire NASA budget for the decade would disappear into the miscellaneous admin bucket of Medicare on any given weekday.

And perhaps we shouldn't look too closely at the question: who said "they" were entitled to anything other than a chance? Nor the fact that the government has deprived everyone of that chance by destroying the economy.

As for NASA proper, what possible science can we do in LEO? Learning if ants can sort tiny screws in space? [Simpsons]. We accomplished all the "science" there was to be done 20 (30?) years ago. It seems a terrible waste to abandon ISS, but the real waste was building it to begin with.

Adding insult to injury we get to: "study climate change". PLEASE!!! The climate is not changing! OK?! Get that straight. Global warming was a global scam. BUSH's people came up with "climate change" because they knew they'd already missed the normal solar heating cycle and will soon have to start talking about Global Cooling. EXACTLY like they were doing in the 1970s - we were headed for another ice age. But I digress.

Supporting commercial launch could be good. But won't be good. The EELV (Boeing & Lockheed) rockets are barely operational from the last big "commercial space" boondoggle. By most any quantitative measure they are failures. Not catastrophes since they are functional but they're certainly not worth a fraction of the investment to create them.

Going back to the moon is a dubious undertaking but would be the minimum acceptable undertaking. A much better plan, and the ONLY one with any chance of actual long range benefit would be a Mars colony.