Posts by Christoph

Stanford boffins create skinnier ‘skin’

New Reg Unit?

"twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot"

Will this become the official El Reg unit of pressure?

Google dumps + from Boolean search tool

Or even ...

+ungood

Anonymous shuts down hidden child abuse hub

It works the first time

The people running these sites will now be taking countermeasures, such as the obvious one of seeding a lot of false names into their database (i.e. real names, probably of prominent people, that have nothing to do with the site). Operation Ore shows how appallingly much trouble that is going to cause to innocent people the next time this happens.

Gulf of California terrorized by ONE-EYED MUTANT SHARK!

I name this shark ...

Harold

Libel reform vows to slay anonymous trolls

What counts as a complaint?

"upon receiving a complaint, website editors would need to publish the complaint next to the original article"

I wish to complain because your web blog on what you and your friends did last Saturday didn't mention my web site at [url] that sells fake Viagra! You are now legally obliged to publish this complaint next to the original article.

Apply the law equally

So the law should apply equally to the net as well as offline?

"bring internet publishing and social media in line with the mainstream press."

Fine. So if I object to any article in any newspaper or on any television channel they are legally obliged to publish my objection with equal prominence? Sounds good.

RIAA-led mob threatens innovation, Senator warns

Short term profit grab, long term decline

The US depends heavily on innovation. What happens to them when they force all the innovators to move to other countries?

"The Captains and the Kings depart..."

DeLorean goes electric for 2013 roll-out

Still with gull-wing doors?

Does this mean that they still have not fixed - in fact they have deliberately retained - the major problem with the design?

How do you get in and out of the car when it is in a car-park with other cars close alongside, making it impossible to fully open those doors?

Bog builder pushes out poo-powered motorbike

How well sealed is it?

What happens in a crash if the fuel container breaks and the contents hits the fan?

Sesame Street YouTube page hijacked by smut pushers

Nothing new

Looks like a classic Joe job. Who has Mredxwx annoyed recently? Someone petty and stupid enough to try getting him done for kiddy porn.

Hubble snaps dark matter warping spacetime

Don't investigate the dark matter!

You might get eaten by a Grue

German states defend use of 'Federal Trojan'

Watch out if you travel to Germany

"The sample of the Trojan obtained by the CCC was apparently placed on a suspect's laptop when he passed through customs at the Munich International airport."

Any electronic equipment that is taken out of your sight by German customs must be assumed to be compromised.

Better not have any commercial confidential information on it either - clean it before travelling.

Basically treat travel to Germany like travel to the USA.

Hero Ordnance Surveyors dodge bullets, tweet as they map

I'm not surprise that landlord didn't co-operate

Why should the landlord give them information for free, that they'll then sell back to him?

It's well past time the OS data was made freely available. There are all sorts of useful things that could be done with computerised access to top-quality mapping. The original maps were made using tax funding, and councils have to give them free information. Why are they still charging?

Homeland Security bungles 'pre-crime' tech test docs

This is a really bad idea

The problem is not just lots of false positives, but that some people will trigger the thing over and over and over again.

(And there's a strong chance that the "highly skilled" operator will see the record of them being flagged many times and take that as proof of guilt.)

Google Books app splurts 3 million titles in UK launch

What happens if your account is deleted?

"others are available for purchase"

"you just have to sign in with your Google account"

Do you lose access to all the books you've purchased if Google decide to delete your account because your name is not in a Google-approved format?

iPhone 5 a no-show at Apple's 'Let's talk iPhone' event

Battery life?

"Apple have produced what is probably going to be the fastest smartphone of the year"

The power to do that has to come from somewhere - will it also be the fastest at using up the battery?

Murdoch organ intrudes into readers' private places

It's for your own good

They are helpfully going to tell you about things you might otherwise have missed.

After all, they're highly trained professional marketing people. Obviously they know what you want better than you yourself do.

And if some silly little end-user complains about it then he simply doesn't understand modern marketing.

Or of course it might just be that they're a bunch of slimy arrogant turds, but that can't possibly be true because they're highly paid.

Aussie parrots hit the sauce and hit the deck

Possible treatment

"the benders and subsequent hangovers kill about half of the parrots"

Have they tried giving them parrotcetamol?

Should your system offer Mr, Ms ... and Mx?

That could be a problem

"it is a criminal offence to disclose such information except for very specific purposes – and the offence is “strict liability”, so ignorance is no excuse."

Just how far does that go? If you went to a single sex school, would you then be unable to ever mention anyone you were at school with just in case they had subsequently changed their gender without you knowing?

HideMyAss defends role in LulzSec hack arrest

Being willing to go to jail for your beliefs is fine.

Being willing for someone else to go to jail for your beliefs is not.

Once they got a court order they had a choice of:

1> Comply

2> Try to fight it - very expensive (might be too expensive to be possible without massive contributions), extremely unlikely to succeed.

3> Go to jail

Facebook: 'We don't track logged-out users'

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies

“our cookies aren’t used for tracking” “most of the cookies you highlight have benign names and values”.

Well he would say that, wouldn't he?

"Generally, unlike other major internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people,"

ROFL!

Neil Armstrong: US space program 'embarrassing'

They don't have the money.

NASA crewed craft tend to be horrendously expensive - the shuttle was a badly compromised design.

If private spacecraft companies can get working vehicles they should be very much cheaper.

So why do they want NASA to build more crewed vehicles? And what have they got against Russia, are they still trying to fight the cold war against the Soviet Union?

Haven't they noticed that the world economy is in a terrible state at the moment?

'Angry Bird in the Sky' spotted by astronomers

They've found the Iron Chicken?

NASA: Beam me up some power, Scotty

Actually they want Jordin Kare on this one. He has the advantage of actually existing, and building real laser applications including working beamed power.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8344670.stm

Blighty's Android fans get British English voice control

His reply

Probably a Glasgow handshake.

NASA releases asteroid flyby video from Dawn probe

It's not a Malteser, it's a walnut. That ridge is where the two halves join.

Google's Native Client goes live in Chrome

Snadboxed code

It's nice to know that it's fully sandboxed.

Completely isolated. Absolutely safe. Nothing can possibly go worng.

"PNaCl will translate native code into bitcode"

Err, sort of like Java then?

LOHAN deluged with Reg readers' interjections in REHAB

How about an angled mirror above the tube, and the camera off to the side?

Probably a metal mirror (with a tether) so you don't have ballistic glass shards.

Hmm. Mirror just resting on supports, so it can get out of the way of the exhaust.

After hack nightmare, Sony bars lawsuits with new TOS

Don't clean up your act, just change the rules of the game

If they are pre-emptively avoiding getting taken to court when they release user information again, that seems to imply that they are planning to do it again. Or at least not bothering to put in reliable defences against doing it again.

I wonder if they could be charged with conspiring to do so? Since they are obviously preparing for it?

Microsoft demos creepy car stalking system

Of course you should micromanage your kids

But only if you're poor.

In this country, if you are poor and your kids commit a crime you can have your benefit cut off and be thrown out of your house. How else can you protect yourself but watch every thing your children do, every minute?

Google plan to kill Javascript with Dart, fight off Apple

jQuery is for developers who want to get on with developing the application, not spend weeks re-inventing the wheel and trying to get the damn thing working with every version of IE back to 6.

Developers who think producing a working application is more important than showing off how macho your coding skills are.

The client doesn't want it perfect, he wants it Tuesday.

Just what we needed

Too many existing versions? Obvious solution - invent yet another one. But make it different enough to throw away the existing investment.

Those various JavaScript frameworks will run on existing browsers - they're going to have a hell of a job getting a new language added to all the standard browsers, let alone to IE. Are they hoping to make it so superior that everyone switches to Chrome? (And to Chrome OS, and hey, everything everywhere runs on Google!)

If you want to standardise, standardise on JQuery. Build it into the browser.

Gravity wave detector gets more sensitive

Just what Douglas Adams wanted

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Apollo 17 Moon landing: Shock revelations

That can't possibly be genuine

All genuine conspiracy theories must by law have at least one reference to the Knights Templar.

Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

We don't need no steenkin' titles!

The comments count has always been severely broken, often showing fewer comments than there actually are, or no comments when there are some.

London public transport tap-cash plans will be 'entirely safe'

External Security Audit?

So the bloke from Transport for London reckons it's 100% safe.

Mandy Rice Davies applies - he would say that, wouldn't he.

But does Ross Anderson reckon it's reasonably secure? Have they even asked him to have a look at it? And if not, WHY NOT?

Painters wrap Forth Bridge job after 121 years

Like ...

Like clearing out the spam trap

Hurry up with webcams in courts, says Sky News boss

Will these broadcasts include

... the eventual trial of Murdoch for phone hacking?

Plods to get dot-uk takedown powers - without court order

Wait for the mission creep

For all occurrences of 'not' in that article, substitute 'not yet'.

Once it's in place, the first thing they will do is think up all sorts of reasons why it has to be expanded just a little bit. And just a little bit more. And ...

It's not a matter of pointing out previous times they've done exactly this. More a matter of has there ever been a single time when they have *not* done so.

Quarter of NHS data collection to go in red-tape slash plan

What are the staff going to do?

What will happen to the out-patients staff that spend all day moving patients from the first queue to a second queue so that the waiting times stay within the official limit?

If they're not careful those staff might have to be deployed on, I don't know, actually helping the patients or something equally silly.

Did Google certificate forgers hit hundreds more sites?

Scrub the lot

They know they've been hacked, but they refuse to give a full list of what fake certificates have been issued? Then untrusting all certificates issued by them is the only safe option.

Tough luck on them - letting themselves be hacked is incompetent, but letting known fake certificates circulate is grossly irresponsible.

DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k

100 years?

Are they worried that in a hundred year's time they'll have run out of countries to bomb?

US Marines not allowed to fart in Afghanistan

New Motto

The Few, the Loud, the Baked Beans

Latest headline:

Marine explodes from trying to hold in a fart

Boffins cobble up phone-powering footwear

How does it affect your walking?

What does it feel like to walk in these shoes, and does it make walking more difficult? I.e. is it extracting energy that would have gone as heat anyway, or do you end up using more energy to walk?

Of course it might be useful to use more energy if you're walking for exercise, but not for normal walking.

comScore sued over 'sinister' data collection methods

Definitely a rogue application

"it monitors ... and the activity that you undertake during secure sessions"

No legitimate application should ever be monitoring secure sessions - the *whole point* of them is to keep the information private.

Saying they'll make a vague stab at not really storing a few of the secure bits is *not good enough* - that data should never have been collected in the first place. Any application that even tries to monitor it is by definition a rogue.

Four months' porridge for 20-minute Facebook riot page

How obvious does the joke need to be?

What would they have done if he had suggesting starting riots in Minas Tirith?

Do they really want a society where you have to watch every single word you say in case someone deliberately misinterprets it? Where you dare not make a joke about anything? Where you must be suspicious of everyone you know in case they turn you in to the police for a casual remark?

Four months is a *ludicrous* over-reaction.

Google unleashes Street View upon the Amazon

Venice?

Now they've got the cameras on a boat, will they be extending Street View to cover Venice?

Insulin pump attack prompts call for federal probe

No reports

"there has never been a single reported incident "

Nobody has reported being killed by this?

And exactly how would they know that it had happened? A diabetic feels ill, or their sugar levels vary unexpectedly, or they drop dead - does anyone check their insulin pump? And would there be any evidence left behind, especially if the attacker set it back to normal levels again later?