Posts by Chris Bradshaw

Top British judge suggests ban on 'cruel' killer roboplanes

@ Harry Stottle

You are absolutely right, and doubly so in the current combat environment. No personal risk means it's too easy to just drob the bomb and accept the collateral damage, or drop it even if we are not sure of the target.

We cannot justify making our soldiers and pilots more important than 'enemy' civilians, because we make enemies of the civiian population and build the support and recruitment capability of the enemy.

Set up the planes with sniper rifles, take out just the baddies even if they are in a crowd, and we will be heroes instead of pariahs.

Boffins guess social security numbers via public data

@ Why guess?

Or just look around while on trains and busses - there's usually a lost CD with 10000+ records on it between the seats somewhere (sometimes it's in the seat pocket).

NASA reacquires original Moon landing footage

Simple resolution of the entire debate

If they lost the pictures, then it didn't happen.

:-)

Web swoons as Jackson dies

I suppose...

the IT angle is the '40 gig comeback'. Isn't that a little small nowadays???

RIP, and thanks for all the music.

Microsoft cries foul over Google Outlookware

memo to self - title goes here

'Evidently, Windows Desktop Search will hang itself trying to index Google stuff' It sounds like Microsoft has an inter-operation issue* to fix before they start complaining. Google did the right thing in disabling Desktop Search during install of the Google app, although I think a pop-up explaining it would be good.

If I didn't trust M$**, I would guess that their non-interoperation with Google's app is deliberate - it is certainly Microsoft's style to force users to use M$ products by crippling the interaction with non-M$ products.

If I didn't trust Google***, I would guess that they used the M$ issue to their advantage - they have a good excuse to screw up M$, so they used it. I just hope it doesn't backfire and make these Windows users happier now their OS is faster...

* read 'bug' or 'design flaw'

** I don't

*** I don't totally, but they are much better than M$

Endeavour 'in good shape' for Wednesday lift-off

spoke too soon,

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8104407.stm

It leaked (premature emissions, as it were) and they postponed it again, next month sometime...

I guess they just couldn't get it up this month at all. NASA at 50-odd years just can't perform the way it could 30 years ago...

Best Buy leaked memo spills Windows 7 upgrade details

@adamd

Easy - buy a PC with Linux installed, and see how the person using it matches up against his/her colleagues after a month or two. If they are more productive, you win. If they can't handle it, then downgrade to Windows, paying the M$ tax as usual.

You get a month-long, real test of Linux for the difference in price between OEM and full cream. And believe me, in testing whether Linux is more or less useful, you can't just try for a couple of days, on a dual boot - it's like any foreign language, you have to live in the culture for a month or two before you really understand it well.

Wiltshire welcomes clutch of Great Bustards

Bustard

I'm a little unclear on the IT angle here - is there some link between a bustard and a freetard? Or does the term bust refer to Miss. Hilton's chest area (which anyway I assume would not be free but paid)?

Obama eyes next NASA boss

Does his race matter??

ActuallyI agree with the honourable (if somewhat excitable) Mr. Prewitt. If he was a white astronaut, you would write just that he is the second astronaut to hold the post, not that he is white. Hispanic or Asian heritage is not usually mentioned in this context (the first asian to hold this office, ...). Also, there is a picture, so those readers who care what he looks like can see. Would you put in a comment if he was mixed race??

We are not in apartheid South Africa, and this is not the 1960s.

Microsoft to EU: Cut me down, and Google will rule the world!

I don't see the problem here.

So what if both Firefox and Opera have agreements with Google to default to Google for search, and Google has agreed with itself to do this with Chrome.

I am sure that an agreement with Mozilla and Opera could be reached, whereby Microsoft would pay a pre-determined sum of money and Mozilla / Opera would change their default search engine to Microsoft's offer (whatever it is). It is purely a matter of business. It is Microsoft's problem if they are not willing to pay this sum* in order to inconvenience Firefox and Opera users by making them change their search engine back to Google.

And I also think that even Microsoft knows that any user who tries both options will realize that:

1. Firefox is better than Internet Explorer

2. Google is better than MSN.

Microsoft's has to limit market exposure to the competition, or force users to use their products through web site incompatibility - but both of these approaches are failing.

* Please note that I do not in any way suggest this sum is small or reasonable, just that there is a sum which would suffice. Whether it would bankrupt Microsoft is a matter of conjecture...

Google name 'worth $100 billion,' says Strategy Boutique

codswallow

According to the urban dictionary, codswallow is:

(noun) Bird-fish; a fish that has the ability to fly

I was just curious whether the root was cod as in fish or cod as in codpiece.

Got to get a PH angle in somehow :-)

Spy chiefs size up net snoop gear

spam :-)

Suddenly, the fact that 85% (or 97% or whatever it is) of email is spam does not seem so bad.

Boffins build super-accurate atomic clock

get laid??

I think another knowledge band has been crossed - this one social. There are some people who can tell a girl that they have designed an atomic clock accurate to one second every 300 million years in such a way as to get laid. There are other people who can actually design such an atomic clock. But the overlap between these two groups of people is extremely small - in fact, I would guess it has roughly the same degree of smallness as the afore-mentioned one second in 300 million years...

BMW opens up to haptic car doors

Excellent

So when this door technology fails and detects an obstacle where none exists, I will probably be unable to open the doors to get out of the <CENSORED> car. Nanny state is not enough, I need a nanny car too??

This reminds me of a friend in the US, whose central locking mechanism failed (this was >10 years ago). When he tried to lock the car, all the doors would lock/unlock/lock/unlock in quick succession for a few minutes until the car battery was dead. He was really rather pissed off about it at the time... :-)

MPs battle to save great British pub

@ Sarah re smoking

On your 'real easy solution' to the poor guy 'standing around freezing my nads off' outside the pub, I absolutely disagree. Castrating the poor chap just because he wants a cig isn't really on...

Why don't you suggest that he just stops smoking???

Put down your pens: Cartoons next on censor block

Cartoons and reality...

"The bill, as it stands, would make it a criminal offence to possess (cartoon) pictures of children participating in sexual activities, or present whilst sexual activity took place. We did ask the Ministry for Justice whether this meant same frame, same page or even same story, but to date we have received no answer"

That's a pretty complicated question to answer - what is the limit of observation of a cartoon child's vision?? Just the frame they are in? Or can they see the whole page? Do mirrors work in comics? What about off-screen mirrors - if there is no visible mirror in the offending frame, but a mirror was visible in an earlier frame (from a different viewpoint) of the same room?

What about X-Rays? If the picture is of (for example) Superman as a kid, does his X-Ray vision really work (i.e. can he see across frame lines, or even other pages in the book)??

And what if the age of the participants was stated in a speech or thought bubble, can a cartoon character's age be determined by their own statement, and how can one tell if they are lying? Does the statement of age have to be in the same issue of a magazine?? How would the cartoon character be called to testify as to their real age in court, and what proof could they give? What if their age was stated as 17 in a magazine issued two years before a sexual scene, do they age and if so at what rate? Little Orphan Annie doesn't appear to age much, for example...

Rather than criminalize these cartoons, it would be better use them as a possible indicator of other, more serious problems. If the person is indeed a pedophile, they are likely to also have indecent photographs or material which IS illegal, whereas if they just happen to like dirty cartoons they would not be prosecutable.

Or the usual laws regarding obscene and indecent material could cover blue cartoons.

Microsoft's R&D chief: the people problem with innovation

easy...

...getting an annual $9bn budget...

...creating $1bn businesses every few years over the last 10 years...

IANAMBA, but gee, how hard can it be to create a $1bn business every few years given $9bn in funding every year? Especially if one can use some of the funding (say, $1bn or so) to buy products from last year's R&D spin-off???

:-)

Court rules 'ceaseless liability' for net libel fine for free speech

Don't like this much..

I would say in this case that the activity of publishing an archive of newspapers is more like making a copy of something in a library rather than a full republishing of an article. The article is historical data which is not modified or recreated each time - it is in a file which physically exists in electronic form and is duplicated, somewhat like a photocopier does.

I assume there are only minor revisions (if any) to the articles in the archive (fixing names and misspellings). Therefore, once written and published, the electronic article is like a physical book or newspaper that one can photocopy and that can be read many times over. I don't think making a photocopy is republishing (but IANAL), even if the copy comes from the original publisher.

If the court thinks there is a new instance of defamation for each copy of the article, the publisher could perhaps include a disclaimer before the article is viewed, something like this:

'This article was found in court to be defamatory, the publisher is making it available only for archival purposes and by downloading it the viewer understands that no new publication of the article will take place, blah blah blah..'

Or just show a static picture of a photocopy of the article... :-)

El Reg suffers identity crisis

Can we have checkboxes, please?

I want to click about 7 of these, and at least 3 don't fit (so all of the above isn't good either).

Given that these are not mutually exclusive (i.e. your readership could see you as an unethical, comically angry, online lesbian magazine website), I think you need to use checkboxes instead of radiobuttons to get a better and more concise survey ^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H (sorry, forgot we're in Web 2.0 now) richer and more compelling experience.

And you forgot to add the Paris Hilton fan club website choice...

Microsoft asks laid-off staff to refund overpaid redundo cash

refund to Microsoft??

Sorry, but until Microsoft is willing to easily and simply refund the cost of the Windows that comes unwanted with my new PC, I won't have any sympathy for them.

Oh, and when they start actually losing money. Laying off people in a depression, when you can still easily afford to employ them, is unconscionable. Let alone the human factor of making people find work in a bad job market, it also compounds the depression because the ex-workers won't spend as much, causing other businesses harm.

And now that I think about it, I would also like them to fix bugs in their software before releasing it, so that I don't have to deal with all the spam and <CENSORED> their <CENSORED AGAIN> software causes worldwide.

Well, actually, I guess actually, there are no circumstances in which I would feel sympathy for MS... :-) My sympathy is with their ex-employees.

Microsoft goes retail with own shops

I'll certainly go there

to get my money back from Microsoft for the unused and unwanted copy of Windows that comes with the next PC I buy. I'll go there every day if needed, until I get it :-)

Born Again Delphi

first names first

Shouldn't that be Pascal Obama?

Wrong kind of winter brings England to a halt

tip from Prague

We get snow all winter over here, in fact as I speak* there are a few inches which fell last night.

Don't you people have skis???

* read write**

** :-)

IT vendor layoffs: The axeman cometh

re: RE: Shouldn't be legal...

"the board has a responsibility to the shareholders ... to try and make as much of a profit as possible, and that duty usually over-rules loyalty to staff."

Yes, that is true. But the board should take a longer-term view of it, rather than focusing on short-term stock price and profit.

Let's say the downturn will last a year, after which hiring and product development will continue as before. Assuming your figures are accurate (about $100,000 per layoff), this is a good percentage of a year's salary for the people laid off.

Any new people they hire in after the downturn is over will need training and time to get up to speed at work, they are not effective for the first few months and will take years to get up to the speed of someone who had done the job for years. This effect is more pronounced in IT, where products are complicated and engineers cannot just pop in and immediately start productive work.

Product development which was postponed will have to be restarted, with probably new programmers and possibly new market conditions. Much of the expert product knowledge within the company will have to be redeveloped, as the teams will have been split up or laid off. The product will be slower to market and cost more to develop.

The effect of layoffs on morale and risk-taking should also be taken into account. When a company has layoffs every year, people don't feel as much loyalty to the company - they are less likely to work hard, more likely to look for a better offer, and less likely to stick around to finish a project before leaving. And if the company has no real reason for the layoffs, the effect on morale is bigger.

Of course, if a company is losing money rapidly, the situation is different - cuts have to be made for financial reasons. But if a company is raking it in, they should invest in the workers that make the company tick - without them, the company is nothing even if it has the best stockholders in the world.

Stockholders are easy to replace, workers are not.

National Safety Council seeks total* cell-phone driving ban

I'm with the 'dangerous driving' ban crowd

Give the police more incentive (and more power) to enforce the existing laws against dangerous driving (including mobile use, watching miniskirts, cutting off, tailgating, putting on makeup, etc)

Making a mobile call at 4:45 PM on a busy fast road without a divider and with screaming kids in the back - yes, it's dangerous and stupid and hopefully people won't do it.

Making the same call at 11 PM on a wide empty motorway is much less dangerous and I don't have a problem with it.

Re bikes - I also bike a lot in cities (San Francisco, Prague) and the idiots out there are idiots whether or not they are on their phones - if the phones were banned they would just occupy both brain cells doing something else instead... And they are a problem for cars too.. Ban them from driving for a year after the 2nd accident, for 3 years after the 3rd, and 5 years for each subsequent one.

Or hang them, it used to work with pirates... (weak, I know, but gotta have an icon :-) )

I've only shagged two blokes, insists Paris Hilton

Weasel words

Perhaps Ms. Hilton has taken a lesson from Bill "sexual relations" Clinton... For example, "done it" means what exactly?? Just intercourse? Or videotaping a fellatio session?? Releasing said video on the web??? (slight pause for Google search...)

And "couple" is also a weasel word - it doesn't have to mean exactly two, does it? "I just had a couple of beers" could mean anything from about a half pint (a fourteen year old kid to his friend the next day) to about six (a driver chatting to a traffic policeman), to about fifteen (a Reg hack on a quick lunch break)...

She's probably just upset that she hasn't been commented on enough recently. Or, then again it could be that she doesn't count the ones that she can't remember.

Israel hacks Arab TV station

Solution to M.E. problems.

Here you are Ms. Bee:

Make the Israeli foreign aid (all of it) dependent on immediately finding a solution with the Palestinians. Give a large (but reduced over time) bonus, based on speed of reaching a peace agreement. Give the Palestinians a huge amount of foreign aid too, and a similar time-based bonus.

BUT:

There is a problem (on both sides) that a minority want to provoke the other side into retaliation, at any cost, because of their political agendas. There has to be a disincentive to retaliate ...

So:

For every single Palestinian rocket falling on Israel, lower the Palestinian foreign aid by $100 million. Similar huge penalties for other terrorist attacks and peace-breaking events.

For every single Palestinian civilian killed by Israel, lower Israel's aid by $100 million. Similar huge penalties for leaving illegal settlements and other peace-breaking events.

The public pressure on both governments and terrorists to abolish the bombs/rockets and the retaliations (and generally to keep the peace) will be immense. Even if a rocket hits Israel or Israel drops a bomb, the victim won't want to retaliate.

Send the Nobel Peace Prize c/o el Reg, please :-) Ta...

P.S. Yes, of course I know that enforcement and judgement is a problem. Let a uninvolved and non-aligned country make the decisions - perhaps Iceland or Tonga??

Microsoft gives XP another four months to live

@ Vladimir

Beautifully written and thought-out comment - I absolutely agree with the entire thing...

The only reason I even have Windows installed is for games and sometimes I need to test a web page in IE :-(

Otherwise, Linux is easier to use, faster, more compatible, and runs fast on lower spec machines.

Preventive policing? Don't even think about it

Ah, random testing

Makes me remember a site in North London where they checked the boot of every 7th car going out. So you count cars and make sure that you are not a multiple of 7 from the one they pull out of line to check...

A number ceases to be random if it is picked randomly once, then used repeatedly. Similarly, a random check is not random if it can safely be avoided by manipulating your position in line...

Sun starts skoolin' partners on software sales

Those that can't do it, teach it.

and those that can't teach it, go into journalism...

Yeah, cheap shot, but we all have to get our Monday blues antidote somehow..

Yahoo! begs world+dog for free engineering

@ AC: I was thinking more along the lines of

I'd be interested in the official DBA-approved technical term for that 'JOIN' :-)

MEPs warn on 'virtual strip searches'

So what...

Just have a line for men, a line for women, and a line for who cares, controlled by respectively men, women, and voyeurs. How different is this from a communal shower in a gym or a beach in France?? We all know pretty much what the other side looks like anyway.

I'll take the X-ray specs icon...

Prison boss demands right to jam inmates' cellphones...

Couple of ideas...

Let the TSA do the searches - this would give them a little actual practice in finding things that are being smuggled in, rather than the usual 'security theater' that is the case in the airports.

Use signal triangulation to find out where exactly the mobiles are, and therefore which prison cells to search.

Check the operators for mobiles which are ALWAYS connected to masts in the vicinity - almost nobody but a prisoner will NEVER leave the area. Then go after those SIMMs - get the numbers and find out who they are calling / texting. Should give a pretty good idea of who has the phone.

In the last resort they could take a lesson from the Afghans - point guns aggressively at the mobile operators until they shut down the masts, perhaps even blow a few up...

Why Paris? - read the last few words again...

India's Moon shot takes to the skies

@ inevitable et al

Every counrty has poor, the US has homeless people and poverty-stricken areas too. India spending on technology is actually a good way to bring more of the country out of poverty.

And realistically, how much would 83m$ (figure shamelessly plagiarised from earlier post) really do for Indian poverty? It amounts to something like $0.10 per head - not really even a drop in the bucket. Of course, I understand that their entire space program costs more than this, but the amounts per head are still not going to make a difference.

Next Windows name unveiled: Windows 7

Congratulations

It seems Microsoft has finally learned to count.. :-)

No, not the joke alert icon, I think this is a serious achievement for them. Perhaps soon they will be able to code a simple bug-free program - "Hello world" springs to mind.

OpenOffice.org overwhelmed by demand for version 3.0

@Bug, Chris C 2008-10-13 16:39 GMT

Nice troll.

No mile-high pr0n for Delta passengers

Is it just me,

or did the 'earlier example' airline change mid-story from American to Qantas? Cutting and pasting a little too fast again, are we?

And I'm not sure that pr0n is the only filter needed here - At a minimum hijack how-to, pro-terrorist and 9/11 plane crash sites ought to be filtered too. But then again loud music, Sadville, stupid YouTube videos, and many other sites could be disturbing too...

Perhaps a better solution to site content filtering would be content-based seating. The pr0n section could be in the back, with a loud music section separating them from the rest of the plane. Then the stupid videos section, the Sadville section, and of course the el Reg section up front in Business class :-)

I think we all know which section Paris would be put in...

Mosley asks Europe to change UK privacy laws

Freedom to publish is vital

Without it, no scandals would be uncovered, no paper would investigate corruption, politicians would have a free hand to do what they liked.

I agree that the financial damages awarded to Mr. Mosley were too small to make the paper think twice, but the solution is to increase the damages or to use criminal rather than financial penalties. Destroying a reputation should not be taken lightly by the papers, but neither should censorship is worse.

VAT fraudsters sentenced to total of 133 years

re Is this some sort of IQ test?

I think the point is that the sentences sound worse if you total them up. But if you do the math (and I agree that an average sentence is about all you can get) you come up with gross of £1,037,594 per year in the slammer, which doesn't seem too bad. This is of course assuming they caught all the perps involved and discovered all the crimes, neither of which is very likely...

It is kind of funny to rate the crime by total prison time, but then maybe the Reg editors are just that little bit more knowledgeable on this subject than us...

Did the width move for you, darling?

re "And eat, of course, we need to eat. "

^eat^drink (Ask a Unix guru)

I automatically skip over the gray bar as my brain interprets it as an ad. I have to actually push myself to read it...

Otherwise, fixed width is unpleasant but I'll get used to it...

Robots to engage in mid-air couplings

What? No foreplay?

Pretty humdrum, if you ask me. Just pop it in, pump quickly, disengage, and fly off. What is the world coming to?

Paris because, well, you can probably guess...

OMFG, what have you done?

briefly

old icons much better

fixed width bad

javascript ads disabled

That said, I read El Reg for the content and humor (siC (sic)), the the page format is gravy (or not...)

The Hadron Collider: What's it all about, then?

@ Andrew - 'Nothing can go faster than the speed of light'

Einstein solved that one - he analyzed the inconsistency and ended up with the famous e=mc^2 (energy equals mass times speed of light squared) equation. Basically subjective time for the protons 'slows down' so that they 'see' the other proton approaching at less than the speed of light. Read up on special relativity if you want to more details...

Google cedes Belgium to Germany

I make it

I make it Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, and most of Switzerland. Lichtenstein is (as usual) to small on this scale to be sure about, but let's include it to be on the safe side...

Please note also the Italians seem to have created a land bridge to Sicily, as have the Turks across the Bosphorus. And has Jordan grabbed a chunk of Israel??

But (and I hope I am not being fastidious here) why the immediate assumption that Germany has taken over Belgium et al, rather than the other way around.

I, for one, welcome our new Lichtensteinian* overlords with open arms.

* or something like that...

Sun may or may not be about to obliterate Oracle and Microsoft

language :-)

It's a pity that some readers can't handle a little mild obscenity here and there, and even more of a pity that some companies can't handle their employees reading it. I read el Reg specifically because of the gratuitous humour, it breaks up the monotony of work.

People should just relax, it's not like el Reg has some Paris Hilton fixation or something...

Doctors: Third babies are the same as patio heaters

If

On average, children of environmentally concerned parents will be more 'green' than their peers. if environmentally aware people have fewer children, while non-green (black? :-) ) types still have the usual number, the environmental awareness of society will be lower than it otherwise would be, thus causing a bigger problem in the long run.

What we need to do is limit the number of children of the environmentally unconscious, perhaps targeted mailings (free condoms or coupons for vasectomies? castration??? :-) ) against Hummer and SUV owners...

Reg hack insults the Parachute Regiment

It depends

For some, the Paras doing their in-air stunts (IANAP) will be fascinating. For others, a group of presumably scantily clad Italian women will be more interesting, even if the stunts themselves are less stunning. I myself fall into the second category, unless of course SWMBO is watching with me...

NY street-cleaning truck swallows dog

@ Graham Bartlett

Lester has been assimilated, this is the third story in a row that is an RotM candidate that hasn't been marked as such.

We're on our own...

(BTW el Reg, what about an RotM icon to help us keep track of the stories, if you lot won't flag them yourselves??)

SpaceShipOne firm to build Stealth Bomber 4.0?

Wake up!!

Undetectable supersonic robot-controlled bombers? Sounds like a RoTM story candidate for sure, or have you given up on this angle (for which read 'been assimilated').

Come on, do try to keep up, we aren't reading this stuff for fun you know....

Cheers, CB

Wireless links to be trialled in Gulfstream flight controls

Not primary use YET...

"... at least in the near term" - that's the scary part. As a backup - no problem because it is better than fly-by-cut-wire.

But as a primary control - no way. It is too easy to ruin the signal. Solar flares, really dim hackers, politicians with wireless network blockers, electronics-frying bombs, directional wifi disruptors, and lots of other potential problems.

Actually, thinking about it, maybe it would be a good idea to test the prototype on Air Force One, depending on who wins the upcoming erection...

Paris because of the (probably intentional) spelling mistake...