This looks great for integrating into projects as long as its possible to get some serial or USB output and should be a bit more powerful than the usual diy micro kits, but as a learning device it doesn't seem that great.
Schools and homes are now kitted out with endless PC's and it would be more of an inconvenience to plug it into a TV - especially when an internet browser is so important nowadays when learning to program something.
My advice, add a little cheap touch-screen to it and it becomes a self contained toy to play without the bother of finding a screen.
How can the writer of this article be so uninformed on GPS and its accuracy that it takes the whole second half of the article to conclude GPS is limited to "between 30 and 60 feet".
How about having another go and re-writing the article to explain how although carrier phase tracking technologies can be accurate to 2mm they would be inappropriate on a fast moving ball etc. rather than using the iPhone as the ultimate GPS example.
Why would any porn company be unhappy about having a whole new address space to buy into with almost no competition from any other companies?
I can't see them ever forcing certain types of companies to have xxx on the end in the same way all the other top-level domains are not used by the correct companies most of the time.
Posted Sunday 27th June 2010 19:31 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Why does every program on Linux have to be community developed?
→#
It's simply unrealistic to think that every program could be replaced with a community/open source alternative if only people would try harder. Some programs are extremely complex yet are used by very few people or firms who require a high level of support - writing new versions of these, while a noble endeavour, would be a waste of the limited development resources which exist.
If Wine got good enough it might have an even better effect on Linux, that developers like Adobe would see it as an easy way to make Linux versions of their programs with only a little outlay to make it play nice with Wine.
IPS LCDs have been around almost as long as regular LCDs, yet because Apple uses the technology in a new product everyone acts like its some revolutionary invention.
So I can pay with a Dutch Debit card, from a Dutch bank, giving a Dutch address and as long as my IP says otherwise its legal.
Changing my IP is something I might do to get around restrictions, setting up offshore bank accounts registered to an address outside the country is something I would not.
"They valued the spectrum based on obligation to launch satellites - still an expensive business - and the business model for satellite telephones is far from proven."
If this is such a good idea how come the other telcos discounted it due to the cost of the satellites?
The untested satellite telephone bit can really be ignored as the actual plan seems to be to rely on blanket ground infrastructure - not like an actual satellite telephone at all.
The costs just don't make sense, Harbinger plans to 'save' $34b over the telco estimates yet the telcos have discounted this idea already because the cost of launching satellites. Even the worst case back of envelope guestimates would put 2 satellites+launch at $2b, still saving a ridiculous amount of money.
I don't care about Trident for all the aforementioned reasons, but the Lib Dems anti-nuclear power stance is one of the main reasons I would not vote for them. It's clear that they oppose it for ideological reasons rather than actual facts about supplying a country with power - I don't know if its the best choice but I sure as hell don't want some politician to rule it out in their manifesto before they even commission a review of power generation schemes.
All the negative points seem to be from the software layer, using up computer resources or causing incompatibility with the OS - surely the solution is to build the encryption into the hardware so its transparent to the OS.
Seagate (and others I'm sure) make full disk encrypted (FDE) hard drives - as long as the processing power on the board is fast enough there should be no slowdown in performance and the OS will run as normal. Combine the risk of large fines with the support costs for software based FDE and the extra cost of these drives will start to look minimal.
Dear Tory Minister. If you want to spout some technological sounding political rhetoric aimed at actual technological minded people then please, next time, get it fact checked if you don't really understand the concepts behind what you are saying.
"Rather than defaulting to the creation of enormous new databases in the style of the late and over-budget NHS system, we will look to leverage the immense power of so-called cloud-based computing where information is decentralised, shared and improved by the wisdom of many."
So you want to store my medical records on twitter or some kind of wiki? and for some unknown reason the servers have to be "cloud-based".
"By introducing a powerful new 'Right to Government Data', we will enable the release of government datasets to be manipulated and presented by others, thereby empowering citizens with more useful, accurate information."
Ok now this is a good idea - but how is this different from the new(ish) Data.gov.uk of exactly the same idea.
"We'll publish online every item of central government spending over £25,000 and local expenditure over £500. As well as publishing every contract in full."
How about you start with the sensitive military purchases ... oh wait.
"And we'll throw open democracy too by introducing a technology enabled Public Reading Stage to each Bill so the wisdom of crowds can improve laws and spot potential problems."
It would be much better to use the wisdom of experts who actually know what they are tailking about, not what the media wants them to think. So when it comes to drug laws have a panel of people you don't just steam-roll every time a daily mail campaign starts and don't sack just because they don't spout the party line but instead science. That would be change I would want to vote for!
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the correct use of IT and would like to see a UK government with a greater competency (generally!) and understanding of technological issues. This just doesn't inspire me with too much confidence when you think the iPhone is open source and the cloud computing is amazing just because its the current in buzz word.
Seems like this could be a ploy to show how the great firewall can inadvertently harm businesses on-line operations from working correctly through just including a series of 3 harmless letters in the url.
1. Tell the police that you think a someone in the Victorinox shop had a memory stick with some animal porn on (of it might have just been the sugar puffs honey monster, it wasn't clear)
2.Police come in and force the decryption under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
3.???
4.Profit
Only hard part is timing it correctly so end of the maximum allowed RIPA time falls within the 2 hour window.
In all seriousness the competition is a bit of a joke, fingerprint scanners can be quite susceptible to fake fingerprints made from a print of the original fingerprint (something fairly easy to pick up in real life but there is no chance of Victorinox providing one).
Mines the one with nitric acid and a microscope in the pocket.
Why limit the memory/disks to a feasible amount even nowadays - seems like a built in obsolescence which will only annoy people looking to run very large instances while providing no benefit. Even the high flavours of Windows 7 support 192GB memory now, so why not make the limit so far in excess of this that it would take a few generations of hardware to reach.
So if you buy TomTom hardware - you know where you actually pay up to £240 for the device, then you get to pay £8/month, £48/half year or £80/year, with no option for that very useful daily pass.
Posted Saturday 13th March 2010 02:59 GMT
Frozen Ghost
What is the point of Google indexing pages which people cant actually visit?
→#
google.cn should run its spiders through the Chinese firewall and only index pages which people can actually visit. Then its not a case of actively filtering the results but building an index of the pages which the population has access to.
Great - so I could be sued everytime someone in the vicinity did some copyright infringement (or worse) and it went down my line.
Also, in the UK at least, the majority of internet packages are nowhere near unlimited so you wouldn't be sharing an unlimited resource. The BT method of running a second open hotspot on the router is still the best solution as then they know who downloaded what.
I like how at 0:25 it used Google Maps to show the position rather than Bing Maps - really gives me confidence that this rendering will be just like the real device!
For everyone who is saying this will push people (back) to piracy - the BBC just doesn't care.
Most of the original BBC content never makes it to DVD so the financial loss from piracy is nothing (or even beneficial considering bandwidth). All the BBC cares about is appeasing license holders to make them see iPlayer as a safe distribution system and hence granting the licence.
Posted Wednesday 3rd March 2010 09:20 GMT
Frozen Ghost
You don't have the right to infect your neighbour
→#
I thought most malware was spread through compromised webservers, dodgy downloads and stupid people. With most people behind a NAT nowadays I cannot believe that a malware infection on a normal PC could attack others and spread unless they were on a local network - which rather defeats the point of banning them from the internet.
Not only has this incident caused multiple media outlets to report on this documents existence but it also shows M$ in a bad light for a draconian reaction which feels more like restricting free speech than copyright infringement.
What always gets me is the rip-off price that gadgets aimed at the older generation cost.
Take for instance the simplicITy computer - all it is is a very low spec box with a custom Linux GUI similar to most netbook distributions but they sell it for £455-£547 depending on whether you want a rubbish Intel or AMD chip in it.
So why on earth have the US tried to deport Gary McKinnon for so long when they are happy to send someone with a similar offence back to a European country?
These people are mad - the record industry decimated itself with lack of content, high pricing and DRM from the beginning - a state it looks like they will never fully recover from. Let me make this very simple for any publishers reading - you can already pirate books, have been for years and will be always able to - now work with that situation.
Compared to mp3s, ebooks are even worse to sell as they really don't provide much benefit to the consumer (outside of technical books).
This is a time of early adopters when the price should be low enough to make ebook readers attractive and move people away from print media (with the printing costs) to electronic distribution (with no costs). Once people are hooked they can bump the prices up every year slightly above the rate of inflation - and voilà expensive ebooks which people are used to buying.
Why is this so difficult for these idiot publishers to understand!
If there was ever a successfully attack on a plane wouldn't it be useful to go back and review the images of all passengers who boarded the plane to look for clues?
If the system was designed properly - e.g. encrypted storage that could only be accessed using master codes held by a central body, TSA/FBI/NSA (pick an acronym). As for pictures leaking, anybody can just photo the screen to get around the fact that pictures aren't stored.
"At $1 per track it seems that 25,000 copies is not all that many"
Assuming the information I found with a quick search is still correct and with a $1 track price:
Apple gets 35 cents
The record label gets 55 cents
and the artist get around 10 cents (if they are lucky and don't have producers and recording costs to pay)
I assume that your support is mainly with the artist rather than the record label so it would require a full 225,000 uploads to deprive the artist of $22,500. With a 4MB song file this would equate to a wholly unrealistic 879GB of uploaded data (per track).
Even if you just consider a full $1 loss per upload, it would still require 88GB of transfer to upload it 22,500 times. Simple common sense dictates that there is almost no chance this occurred and so the fine is grossly disproportionate to even cover the theoretical loss of 1 upload = 1 lost sale.
Groundsource also works with vertical boreholes so the area of land required is actually quite small, if loads of these type of systems were installed then the price of boring would probably fall to less than that of digging lots of trenches on the surface.
There are also airsource heat pumps which work almost exactly like air-conditioning units in reverse, removing heat from the air outside and putting it inside (as hot water). These work even with air temps below 0C but are obviously less efficient than GSHP but much cheaper and easier to install.
These are the kind of decent energy saving thing people should have been persuaded to install years ago - not pathetic wind/solar where 1kW is about as good as they get for residential installations. With GSHP you could put in 6kW of electric and get 18kW of heat out constantly. A 12kW wind turbine would be huge in comparison both physically and cost-wise.
I was going to comment that this figure sounded a bit short sighted given how fast storage needs grow but then I had a look and found that MS specifies that exFAT supports volumes up to 64ZB with 512TB recommended maximum (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704).
Maybe the solution is more human than technological, only in the last few years has all this digital information really become available so it is still treated with the same attitude as before.
10 years ago there would have been so little information available in the public domain that finding drunken pictures or articles about LSD would have possibly indicated the tip of an iceberg and would have been treated accordingly.
Now they are simply applying the same reasoning to an internet search - with time they should get used to having large amounts of information and be able to logically prioritise the important bits - otherwise there will be a significant shortage of teachers in the coming years!
If they had any sense they would choose devices which have a quantifiable performance - e.g. the PQ of a TV image is not quantifiable and therefore when the manufactures employ some control trickery to lower the energy consumption it will probably result in worse PQ for the owners but still follow the regulations.
If they were sensible they should have mandated 80%+ efficient PSUs or proper <1w standby for all devices or more efficient fridges/freezers or air conditioners.
"They found the devices were susceptible to ... remote attacks that drained the batteries"
So with their new solution whenever the device receives a correct rf signal, a microphone has to be used to determine the distance away the reader is - how does this help as it will still drain the battery with constant rf requests?
Whenever obscurity is used for security rather than good cryptography it almost always fails
Better NewsCorp learn the lesson for everyone than a news outlet I care about.
The only reason I pay for a newspaper sometimes is because its on paper (gasp) and hence convenient to read away from a computer. The online section would need a serious 'value add' to make it worth paying for.
Possibly Murdoch knows something about large scale colour e-ink screens but I think he is 5+ years out.
Can anyone explain how a "catastrophic hardware failure" can ever lead to the loss ALL data in a situation where there must be many racks of drives? - without using an EM pulse of course
Its not like they just had a NAS box in their basement and called it cloud storage...
I could possibly believe 'catastrophic software failure' but 'catastrophic human error' sounds about right
Register
35 posts • joined Monday 19th October 2009 23:39 GMT
Posted Friday 6th May 2011 20:06 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Great for projects not learning → #
In Elite coder readies £15 programming gadget for schools
This looks great for integrating into projects as long as its possible to get some serial or USB output and should be a bit more powerful than the usual diy micro kits, but as a learning device it doesn't seem that great.
Schools and homes are now kitted out with endless PC's and it would be more of an inconvenience to plug it into a TV - especially when an internet browser is so important nowadays when learning to program something.
My advice, add a little cheap touch-screen to it and it becomes a self contained toy to play without the bother of finding a screen.
Posted Sunday 11th July 2010 13:07 GMT
Frozen Ghost
@Dahak → #
In Image recognition – defense against a Lampard replay?
How can the writer of this article be so uninformed on GPS and its accuracy that it takes the whole second half of the article to conclude GPS is limited to "between 30 and 60 feet".
How about having another go and re-writing the article to explain how although carrier phase tracking technologies can be accurate to 2mm they would be inappropriate on a fast moving ball etc. rather than using the iPhone as the ultimate GPS example.
Posted Monday 28th June 2010 14:10 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Unhappy? → #
In Observer columnist in online porn mixup
Why would any porn company be unhappy about having a whole new address space to buy into with almost no competition from any other companies?
I can't see them ever forcing certain types of companies to have xxx on the end in the same way all the other top-level domains are not used by the correct companies most of the time.
Posted Sunday 27th June 2010 19:31 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Why does every program on Linux have to be community developed? → #
In Linux game-time refined with latest Wine
It's simply unrealistic to think that every program could be replaced with a community/open source alternative if only people would try harder. Some programs are extremely complex yet are used by very few people or firms who require a high level of support - writing new versions of these, while a noble endeavour, would be a waste of the limited development resources which exist.
If Wine got good enough it might have an even better effect on Linux, that developers like Adobe would see it as an easy way to make Linux versions of their programs with only a little outlay to make it play nice with Wine.
Posted Monday 14th June 2010 10:25 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Apple reinvents an old technology → #
In New wave of superphones poised to challenge iPhone 4
IPS LCDs have been around almost as long as regular LCDs, yet because Apple uses the technology in a new product everyone acts like its some revolutionary invention.
Posted Thursday 3rd June 2010 15:07 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Dutch IP addresses → #
In Judges back Holland against Ladbrokes on online gaming
Is this really the only protection they have!?
So I can pay with a Dutch Debit card, from a Dutch bank, giving a Dutch address and as long as my IP says otherwise its legal.
Changing my IP is something I might do to get around restrictions, setting up offshore bank accounts registered to an address outside the country is something I would not.
Posted Tuesday 1st June 2010 09:07 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Real costs → #
In Satellite firm offers 4G network on back of 2G business model
"They valued the spectrum based on obligation to launch satellites - still an expensive business - and the business model for satellite telephones is far from proven."
If this is such a good idea how come the other telcos discounted it due to the cost of the satellites?
The untested satellite telephone bit can really be ignored as the actual plan seems to be to rely on blanket ground infrastructure - not like an actual satellite telephone at all.
The costs just don't make sense, Harbinger plans to 'save' $34b over the telco estimates yet the telcos have discounted this idea already because the cost of launching satellites. Even the worst case back of envelope guestimates would put 2 satellites+launch at $2b, still saving a ridiculous amount of money.
Posted Wednesday 5th May 2010 14:28 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Nuclear Power → #
In Vote Lib Dem, doom humanity to extinction
I don't care about Trident for all the aforementioned reasons, but the Lib Dems anti-nuclear power stance is one of the main reasons I would not vote for them. It's clear that they oppose it for ideological reasons rather than actual facts about supplying a country with power - I don't know if its the best choice but I sure as hell don't want some politician to rule it out in their manifesto before they even commission a review of power generation schemes.
Posted Monday 19th April 2010 17:08 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Hardware solution? → #
In Should all hard drives be encrypted?
All the negative points seem to be from the software layer, using up computer resources or causing incompatibility with the OS - surely the solution is to build the encryption into the hardware so its transparent to the OS.
Seagate (and others I'm sure) make full disk encrypted (FDE) hard drives - as long as the processing power on the board is fast enough there should be no slowdown in performance and the OS will run as normal. Combine the risk of large fines with the support costs for software based FDE and the extra cost of these drives will start to look minimal.
Posted Tuesday 6th April 2010 14:19 GMT
Frozen Ghost
More harm than good → #
In How a Tory gov will be the most tech-savvy in history
Dear Tory Minister. If you want to spout some technological sounding political rhetoric aimed at actual technological minded people then please, next time, get it fact checked if you don't really understand the concepts behind what you are saying.
"Rather than defaulting to the creation of enormous new databases in the style of the late and over-budget NHS system, we will look to leverage the immense power of so-called cloud-based computing where information is decentralised, shared and improved by the wisdom of many."
So you want to store my medical records on twitter or some kind of wiki? and for some unknown reason the servers have to be "cloud-based".
"By introducing a powerful new 'Right to Government Data', we will enable the release of government datasets to be manipulated and presented by others, thereby empowering citizens with more useful, accurate information."
Ok now this is a good idea - but how is this different from the new(ish) Data.gov.uk of exactly the same idea.
"We'll publish online every item of central government spending over £25,000 and local expenditure over £500. As well as publishing every contract in full."
How about you start with the sensitive military purchases ... oh wait.
"And we'll throw open democracy too by introducing a technology enabled Public Reading Stage to each Bill so the wisdom of crowds can improve laws and spot potential problems."
It would be much better to use the wisdom of experts who actually know what they are tailking about, not what the media wants them to think. So when it comes to drug laws have a panel of people you don't just steam-roll every time a daily mail campaign starts and don't sack just because they don't spout the party line but instead science. That would be change I would want to vote for!
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the correct use of IT and would like to see a UK government with a greater competency (generally!) and understanding of technological issues. This just doesn't inspire me with too much confidence when you think the iPhone is open source and the cloud computing is amazing just because its the current in buzz word.
Posted Tuesday 30th March 2010 21:00 GMT
Frozen Ghost
On purpose? → #
In Google backtracks on cause of China search block
Seems like this could be a ploy to show how the great firewall can inadvertently harm businesses on-line operations from working correctly through just including a series of 3 harmless letters in the url.
Posted Monday 22nd March 2010 15:37 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Simple → #
In Victorinox offers hackers £100,000 challenge
1. Tell the police that you think a someone in the Victorinox shop had a memory stick with some animal porn on (of it might have just been the sugar puffs honey monster, it wasn't clear)
2.Police come in and force the decryption under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
3.???
4.Profit
Only hard part is timing it correctly so end of the maximum allowed RIPA time falls within the 2 hour window.
In all seriousness the competition is a bit of a joke, fingerprint scanners can be quite susceptible to fake fingerprints made from a print of the original fingerprint (something fairly easy to pick up in real life but there is no chance of Victorinox providing one).
Mines the one with nitric acid and a microscope in the pocket.
Posted Monday 15th March 2010 18:17 GMT
Frozen Ghost
32GB / 2TB → #
In VMware opens up Workstation 7.1 beta
Why limit the memory/disks to a feasible amount even nowadays - seems like a built in obsolescence which will only annoy people looking to run very large instances while providing no benefit. Even the high flavours of Windows 7 support 192GB memory now, so why not make the limit so far in excess of this that it would take a few generations of hardware to reach.
Posted Monday 15th March 2010 11:41 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Thanks TomTom → #
In TomTom for iPhone gets traffic updates
So if you buy TomTom hardware - you know where you actually pay up to £240 for the device, then you get to pay £8/month, £48/half year or £80/year, with no option for that very useful daily pass.
Posted Saturday 13th March 2010 02:59 GMT
Frozen Ghost
What is the point of Google indexing pages which people cant actually visit? → #
In China warns Google over uncensored search threat
google.cn should run its spiders through the Chinese firewall and only index pages which people can actually visit. Then its not a case of actively filtering the results but building an index of the pages which the population has access to.
Posted Tuesday 9th March 2010 19:51 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Shared responsibility? → #
In Cisco promises to 'forever change the internet'
Great - so I could be sued everytime someone in the vicinity did some copyright infringement (or worse) and it went down my line.
Also, in the UK at least, the majority of internet packages are nowhere near unlimited so you wouldn't be sharing an unlimited resource. The BT method of running a second open hotspot on the router is still the best solution as then they know who downloaded what.
Posted Tuesday 9th March 2010 11:48 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Its easy → #
In Intel investigates after retailer sold fake CPUs
You wouldn't steal a car ... You wouldn't steal a handbag ... You wouldn't steal a television ... You wouldn't steal a dvd ...
Selling counterfeit Intel CPUs in elaborately designed packaging and then claiming they were demo units is STEALING.
Stealing is against the law!
Piracy, it's a crime
Posted Monday 8th March 2010 10:14 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Realistic → #
In Microsoft's dual-screen booklet shows 'face' on web
I like how at 0:25 it used Google Maps to show the position rather than Bing Maps - really gives me confidence that this rendering will be just like the real device!
Posted Friday 5th March 2010 23:29 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Piracy? → #
In BBC claims angry iPlayer plugin mob 'conflated' open source term
For everyone who is saying this will push people (back) to piracy - the BBC just doesn't care.
Most of the original BBC content never makes it to DVD so the financial loss from piracy is nothing (or even beneficial considering bandwidth). All the BBC cares about is appeasing license holders to make them see iPlayer as a safe distribution system and hence granting the licence.
Posted Wednesday 3rd March 2010 09:20 GMT
Frozen Ghost
You don't have the right to infect your neighbour → #
In Microsoft wants to put infected PCs in rubber room
I thought most malware was spread through compromised webservers, dodgy downloads and stupid people. With most people behind a NAT nowadays I cannot believe that a malware infection on a normal PC could attack others and spread unless they were on a local network - which rather defeats the point of banning them from the internet.
Posted Thursday 25th February 2010 23:57 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Streisand effect → #
In Cryptome restored after Microsoft change of heart
Barbra would be proud.
Not only has this incident caused multiple media outlets to report on this documents existence but it also shows M$ in a bad light for a draconian reaction which feels more like restricting free speech than copyright infringement.
Posted Monday 22nd February 2010 22:22 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Time? → #
In Virgin offers cut-price data roaming in Europe
Why have they added time to the equation?
Would it not be so much simpler to have the same price increment and £1=1MB but all lasting for 30 days, instead you end up with the situation that:
£10=10MB/day
£15=5MB/day
£30=4.3MB/day
£60=2MB/day
So the longer the pass you buy, the less you can use per day.
Posted Monday 22nd February 2010 15:23 GMT
Frozen Ghost
All alone → #
In O2 claims win in UK mobile broadband speed test
Maybe its fast because no one else knows the secret location of the tiny amount of O2 3G coverage, so they got all the bandwidth to themselves.
Posted Tuesday 16th February 2010 19:54 GMT
Frozen Ghost
OAP = Over Amplified Price → #
In My mother-in-law wants this! (For her birthday, you understand)
What always gets me is the rip-off price that gadgets aimed at the older generation cost.
Take for instance the simplicITy computer - all it is is a very low spec box with a custom Linux GUI similar to most netbook distributions but they sell it for £455-£547 depending on whether you want a rubbish Intel or AMD chip in it.
Posted Monday 8th February 2010 20:26 GMT
Frozen Ghost
cough * Gary McKinnon * cough → #
In Sweden to prosecute alleged Cisco, NASA hacker
So why on earth have the US tried to deport Gary McKinnon for so long when they are happy to send someone with a similar offence back to a European country?
Posted Friday 5th February 2010 21:28 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Madness → #
In Sci-fi and fantasy authors wade into Amazon spat
These people are mad - the record industry decimated itself with lack of content, high pricing and DRM from the beginning - a state it looks like they will never fully recover from. Let me make this very simple for any publishers reading - you can already pirate books, have been for years and will be always able to - now work with that situation.
Compared to mp3s, ebooks are even worse to sell as they really don't provide much benefit to the consumer (outside of technical books).
This is a time of early adopters when the price should be low enough to make ebook readers attractive and move people away from print media (with the printing costs) to electronic distribution (with no costs). Once people are hooked they can bump the prices up every year slightly above the rate of inflation - and voilà expensive ebooks which people are used to buying.
Why is this so difficult for these idiot publishers to understand!
Posted Wednesday 13th January 2010 00:49 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Useful to store them for evidence? → #
In US airport body scanners can store and export images
If there was ever a successfully attack on a plane wouldn't it be useful to go back and review the images of all passengers who boarded the plane to look for clues?
If the system was designed properly - e.g. encrypted storage that could only be accessed using master codes held by a central body, TSA/FBI/NSA (pick an acronym). As for pictures leaking, anybody can just photo the screen to get around the fact that pictures aren't stored.
Posted Tuesday 5th January 2010 12:55 GMT
Frozen Ghost
25000 uploads? → #
In Record-fine Napsterer wants retrial with RIAA
"At $1 per track it seems that 25,000 copies is not all that many"
Assuming the information I found with a quick search is still correct and with a $1 track price:
Apple gets 35 cents
The record label gets 55 cents
and the artist get around 10 cents (if they are lucky and don't have producers and recording costs to pay)
I assume that your support is mainly with the artist rather than the record label so it would require a full 225,000 uploads to deprive the artist of $22,500. With a 4MB song file this would equate to a wholly unrealistic 879GB of uploaded data (per track).
Even if you just consider a full $1 loss per upload, it would still require 88GB of transfer to upload it 22,500 times. Simple common sense dictates that there is almost no chance this occurred and so the fine is grossly disproportionate to even cover the theoretical loss of 1 upload = 1 lost sale.
Posted Monday 14th December 2009 06:45 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Other methods → #
In GSHP: The green tech even carbon sceptics will like
Groundsource also works with vertical boreholes so the area of land required is actually quite small, if loads of these type of systems were installed then the price of boring would probably fall to less than that of digging lots of trenches on the surface.
There are also airsource heat pumps which work almost exactly like air-conditioning units in reverse, removing heat from the air outside and putting it inside (as hot water). These work even with air temps below 0C but are obviously less efficient than GSHP but much cheaper and easier to install.
These are the kind of decent energy saving thing people should have been persuaded to install years ago - not pathetic wind/solar where 1kW is about as good as they get for residential installations. With GSHP you could put in 6kW of electric and get 18kW of heat out constantly. A 12kW wind turbine would be huge in comparison both physically and cost-wise.
Posted Friday 11th December 2009 16:59 GMT
Frozen Ghost
"supports up to 256TB of data" → #
In Microsoft urges Flash makers to pay fat dollar for exFAT format
I was going to comment that this figure sounded a bit short sighted given how fast storage needs grow but then I had a look and found that MS specifies that exFAT supports volumes up to 64ZB with 512TB recommended maximum (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704).
Where did MS pull the figure of 256TB from?
Posted Sunday 22nd November 2009 15:00 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Don't delete, ignore → #
In Is data overload killing off human initiative?
Maybe the solution is more human than technological, only in the last few years has all this digital information really become available so it is still treated with the same attitude as before.
10 years ago there would have been so little information available in the public domain that finding drunken pictures or articles about LSD would have possibly indicated the tip of an iceberg and would have been treated accordingly.
Now they are simply applying the same reasoning to an internet search - with time they should get used to having large amounts of information and be able to logically prioritise the important bits - otherwise there will be a significant shortage of teachers in the coming years!
Posted Thursday 19th November 2009 23:45 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Poor choice of device → #
In California votes in HD TV power pruning law
If they had any sense they would choose devices which have a quantifiable performance - e.g. the PQ of a TV image is not quantifiable and therefore when the manufactures employ some control trickery to lower the energy consumption it will probably result in worse PQ for the owners but still follow the regulations.
If they were sensible they should have mandated 80%+ efficient PSUs or proper <1w standby for all devices or more efficient fridges/freezers or air conditioners.
Just not things which are audio visual!
Posted Saturday 14th November 2009 07:00 GMT
Frozen Ghost
Power drain? → #
In Boffins fight pacemaker hacks with ultrasound security
"They found the devices were susceptible to ... remote attacks that drained the batteries"
So with their new solution whenever the device receives a correct rf signal, a microphone has to be used to determine the distance away the reader is - how does this help as it will still drain the battery with constant rf requests?
Whenever obscurity is used for security rather than good cryptography it almost always fails
Posted Tuesday 10th November 2009 10:00 GMT
Frozen Ghost
bring on the lesson → #
In Murdoch threatens to yank News Corp. from Google News
Better NewsCorp learn the lesson for everyone than a news outlet I care about.
The only reason I pay for a newspaper sometimes is because its on paper (gasp) and hence convenient to read away from a computer. The online section would need a serious 'value add' to make it worth paying for.
Possibly Murdoch knows something about large scale colour e-ink screens but I think he is 5+ years out.
Posted Tuesday 20th October 2009 00:21 GMT
Frozen Ghost
catastrophic what? → #
In Swissdisk suffers spectacular cloud snafu
Can anyone explain how a "catastrophic hardware failure" can ever lead to the loss ALL data in a situation where there must be many racks of drives? - without using an EM pulse of course
Its not like they just had a NAS box in their basement and called it cloud storage...
I could possibly believe 'catastrophic software failure' but 'catastrophic human error' sounds about right